The following method of CPU hotplug callback registration is not safe due to the possibility of an ABBA deadlock involving the cpu_add_remove_lock and the cpu_hotplug.lock. get_online_cpus(); for_each_online_cpu(cpu) init_cpu(cpu); register_cpu_notifier(&foobar_cpu_notifier); put_online_cpus(); The deadlock is shown below: CPU 0 CPU 1 ----- ----- Acquire cpu_hotplug.lock [via get_online_cpus()] CPU online/offline operation takes cpu_add_remove_lock [via cpu_maps_update_begin()] Try to acquire cpu_add_remove_lock [via register_cpu_notifier()] CPU online/offline operation tries to acquire cpu_hotplug.lock [via cpu_hotplug_begin()] *** DEADLOCK! *** The problem here is that callback registration takes the locks in one order whereas the CPU hotplug operations take the same locks in the opposite order. To avoid this issue and to provide a race-free method to register CPU hotplug callbacks (along with initialization of already online CPUs), introduce new variants of the callback registration APIs that simply register the callbacks without holding the cpu_add_remove_lock during the registration. That way, we can avoid the ABBA scenario. However, we will need to hold the cpu_add_remove_lock throughout the entire critical section, to protect updates to the callback/notifier chain. This can be achieved by writing the callback registration code as follows: cpu_maps_update_begin(); [ or cpu_notifier_register_begin(); see below ] for_each_online_cpu(cpu) init_cpu(cpu); /* This doesn't take the cpu_add_remove_lock */ __register_cpu_notifier(&foobar_cpu_notifier); cpu_maps_update_done(); [ or cpu_notifier_register_done(); see below ] Note that we can't use get_online_cpus() here instead of cpu_maps_update_begin() because the cpu_hotplug.lock is dropped during the invocation of CPU_POST_DEAD notifiers, and hence get_online_cpus() cannot provide the necessary synchronization to protect the callback/notifier chains against concurrent reads and writes. On the other hand, since the cpu_add_remove_lock protects the entire hotplug operation (including CPU_POST_DEAD), we can use cpu_maps_update_begin/done() to guarantee proper synchronization. Also, since cpu_maps_update_begin/done() is like a super-set of get/put_online_cpus(), the former naturally protects the critical sections from concurrent hotplug operations. Since the names cpu_maps_update_begin/done() don't make much sense in CPU hotplug callback registration scenarios, we'll introduce new APIs named cpu_notifier_register_begin/done() and map them to cpu_maps_update_begin/done(). In summary, introduce the lockless variants of un/register_cpu_notifier() and also export the cpu_notifier_register_begin/done() APIs for use by modules. This way, we provide a race-free way to register hotplug callbacks as well as perform initialization for the CPUs that are already online. Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> Acked-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com> Acked-by: Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@hp.com> Reviewed-by: Gautham R. Shenoy <ego@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Srivatsa S. Bhat <srivatsa.bhat@linux.vnet.ibm.com> Signed-off-by: Rafael J. Wysocki <rafael.j.wysocki@intel.com>