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+Runtime locking correctness validator
+=====================================
+
+started by Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
+additions by Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
+
+Lock-class
+----------
+
+The basic object the validator operates upon is a 'class' of locks.
+
+A class of locks is a group of locks that are logically the same with
+respect to locking rules, even if the locks may have multiple (possibly
+tens of thousands of) instantiations. For example a lock in the inode
+struct is one class, while each inode has its own instantiation of that
+lock class.
+
+The validator tracks the 'state' of lock-classes, and it tracks
+dependencies between different lock-classes. The validator maintains a
+rolling proof that the state and the dependencies are correct.
+
+Unlike an lock instantiation, the lock-class itself never goes away: when
+a lock-class is used for the first time after bootup it gets registered,
+and all subsequent uses of that lock-class will be attached to this
+lock-class.
+
+State
+-----
+
+The validator tracks lock-class usage history into 4n + 1 separate state bits:
+
+- 'ever held in STATE context'
+- 'ever held as readlock in STATE context'
+- 'ever held with STATE enabled'
+- 'ever held as readlock with STATE enabled'
+
+Where STATE can be either one of (kernel/locking/lockdep_states.h)
+ - hardirq
+ - softirq
+ - reclaim_fs
+
+- 'ever used'                                       [ == !unused        ]
+
+When locking rules are violated, these state bits are presented in the
+locking error messages, inside curlies. A contrived example:
+
+   modprobe/2287 is trying to acquire lock:
+    (&sio_locks[i].lock){-.-...}, at: [<c02867fd>] mutex_lock+0x21/0x24
+
+   but task is already holding lock:
+    (&sio_locks[i].lock){-.-...}, at: [<c02867fd>] mutex_lock+0x21/0x24
+
+
+The bit position indicates STATE, STATE-read, for each of the states listed
+above, and the character displayed in each indicates:
+
+   '.'  acquired while irqs disabled and not in irq context
+   '-'  acquired in irq context
+   '+'  acquired with irqs enabled
+   '?'  acquired in irq context with irqs enabled.
+
+Unused mutexes cannot be part of the cause of an error.
+
+
+Single-lock state rules:
+------------------------
+
+A softirq-unsafe lock-class is automatically hardirq-unsafe as well. The
+following states are exclusive, and only one of them is allowed to be
+set for any lock-class:
+
+ <hardirq-safe> and <hardirq-unsafe>
+ <softirq-safe> and <softirq-unsafe>
+
+The validator detects and reports lock usage that violate these
+single-lock state rules.
+
+Multi-lock dependency rules:
+----------------------------
+
+The same lock-class must not be acquired twice, because this could lead
+to lock recursion deadlocks.
+
+Furthermore, two locks may not be taken in different order:
+
+ <L1> -> <L2>
+ <L2> -> <L1>
+
+because this could lead to lock inversion deadlocks. (The validator
+finds such dependencies in arbitrary complexity, i.e. there can be any
+other locking sequence between the acquire-lock operations, the
+validator will still track all dependencies between locks.)
+
+Furthermore, the following usage based lock dependencies are not allowed
+between any two lock-classes:
+
+   <hardirq-safe>   ->  <hardirq-unsafe>
+   <softirq-safe>   ->  <softirq-unsafe>
+
+The first rule comes from the fact the a hardirq-safe lock could be
+taken by a hardirq context, interrupting a hardirq-unsafe lock - and
+thus could result in a lock inversion deadlock. Likewise, a softirq-safe
+lock could be taken by an softirq context, interrupting a softirq-unsafe
+lock.
+
+The above rules are enforced for any locking sequence that occurs in the
+kernel: when acquiring a new lock, the validator checks whether there is
+any rule violation between the new lock and any of the held locks.
+
+When a lock-class changes its state, the following aspects of the above
+dependency rules are enforced:
+
+- if a new hardirq-safe lock is discovered, we check whether it
+  took any hardirq-unsafe lock in the past.
+
+- if a new softirq-safe lock is discovered, we check whether it took
+  any softirq-unsafe lock in the past.
+
+- if a new hardirq-unsafe lock is discovered, we check whether any
+  hardirq-safe lock took it in the past.
+
+- if a new softirq-unsafe lock is discovered, we check whether any
+  softirq-safe lock took it in the past.
+
+(Again, we do these checks too on the basis that an interrupt context
+could interrupt _any_ of the irq-unsafe or hardirq-unsafe locks, which
+could lead to a lock inversion deadlock - even if that lock scenario did
+not trigger in practice yet.)
+
+Exception: Nested data dependencies leading to nested locking
+-------------------------------------------------------------
+
+There are a few cases where the Linux kernel acquires more than one
+instance of the same lock-class. Such cases typically happen when there
+is some sort of hierarchy within objects of the same type. In these
+cases there is an inherent "natural" ordering between the two objects
+(defined by the properties of the hierarchy), and the kernel grabs the
+locks in this fixed order on each of the objects.
+
+An example of such an object hierarchy that results in "nested locking"
+is that of a "whole disk" block-dev object and a "partition" block-dev
+object; the partition is "part of" the whole device and as long as one
+always takes the whole disk lock as a higher lock than the partition
+lock, the lock ordering is fully correct. The validator does not
+automatically detect this natural ordering, as the locking rule behind
+the ordering is not static.
+
+In order to teach the validator about this correct usage model, new
+versions of the various locking primitives were added that allow you to
+specify a "nesting level". An example call, for the block device mutex,
+looks like this:
+
+enum bdev_bd_mutex_lock_class
+{
+       BD_MUTEX_NORMAL,
+       BD_MUTEX_WHOLE,
+       BD_MUTEX_PARTITION
+};
+
+ mutex_lock_nested(&bdev->bd_contains->bd_mutex, BD_MUTEX_PARTITION);
+
+In this case the locking is done on a bdev object that is known to be a
+partition.
+
+The validator treats a lock that is taken in such a nested fashion as a
+separate (sub)class for the purposes of validation.
+
+Note: When changing code to use the _nested() primitives, be careful and
+check really thoroughly that the hierarchy is correctly mapped; otherwise
+you can get false positives or false negatives.
+
+Proof of 100% correctness:
+--------------------------
+
+The validator achieves perfect, mathematical 'closure' (proof of locking
+correctness) in the sense that for every simple, standalone single-task
+locking sequence that occurred at least once during the lifetime of the
+kernel, the validator proves it with a 100% certainty that no
+combination and timing of these locking sequences can cause any class of
+lock related deadlock. [*]
+
+I.e. complex multi-CPU and multi-task locking scenarios do not have to
+occur in practice to prove a deadlock: only the simple 'component'
+locking chains have to occur at least once (anytime, in any
+task/context) for the validator to be able to prove correctness. (For
+example, complex deadlocks that would normally need more than 3 CPUs and
+a very unlikely constellation of tasks, irq-contexts and timings to
+occur, can be detected on a plain, lightly loaded single-CPU system as
+well!)
+
+This radically decreases the complexity of locking related QA of the
+kernel: what has to be done during QA is to trigger as many "simple"
+single-task locking dependencies in the kernel as possible, at least
+once, to prove locking correctness - instead of having to trigger every
+possible combination of locking interaction between CPUs, combined with
+every possible hardirq and softirq nesting scenario (which is impossible
+to do in practice).
+
+[*] assuming that the validator itself is 100% correct, and no other
+    part of the system corrupts the state of the validator in any way.
+    We also assume that all NMI/SMM paths [which could interrupt
+    even hardirq-disabled codepaths] are correct and do not interfere
+    with the validator. We also assume that the 64-bit 'chain hash'
+    value is unique for every lock-chain in the system. Also, lock
+    recursion must not be higher than 20.
+
+Performance:
+------------
+
+The above rules require _massive_ amounts of runtime checking. If we did
+that for every lock taken and for every irqs-enable event, it would
+render the system practically unusably slow. The complexity of checking
+is O(N^2), so even with just a few hundred lock-classes we'd have to do
+tens of thousands of checks for every event.
+
+This problem is solved by checking any given 'locking scenario' (unique
+sequence of locks taken after each other) only once. A simple stack of
+held locks is maintained, and a lightweight 64-bit hash value is
+calculated, which hash is unique for every lock chain. The hash value,
+when the chain is validated for the first time, is then put into a hash
+table, which hash-table can be checked in a lockfree manner. If the
+locking chain occurs again later on, the hash table tells us that we
+dont have to validate the chain again.
+
+Troubleshooting:
+----------------
+
+The validator tracks a maximum of MAX_LOCKDEP_KEYS number of lock classes.
+Exceeding this number will trigger the following lockdep warning:
+
+	(DEBUG_LOCKS_WARN_ON(id >= MAX_LOCKDEP_KEYS))
+
+By default, MAX_LOCKDEP_KEYS is currently set to 8191, and typical
+desktop systems have less than 1,000 lock classes, so this warning
+normally results from lock-class leakage or failure to properly
+initialize locks.  These two problems are illustrated below:
+
+1.	Repeated module loading and unloading while running the validator
+	will result in lock-class leakage.  The issue here is that each
+	load of the module will create a new set of lock classes for
+	that module's locks, but module unloading does not remove old
+	classes (see below discussion of reuse of lock classes for why).
+	Therefore, if that module is loaded and unloaded repeatedly,
+	the number of lock classes will eventually reach the maximum.
+
+2.	Using structures such as arrays that have large numbers of
+	locks that are not explicitly initialized.  For example,
+	a hash table with 8192 buckets where each bucket has its own
+	spinlock_t will consume 8192 lock classes -unless- each spinlock
+	is explicitly initialized at runtime, for example, using the
+	run-time spin_lock_init() as opposed to compile-time initializers
+	such as __SPIN_LOCK_UNLOCKED().  Failure to properly initialize
+	the per-bucket spinlocks would guarantee lock-class overflow.
+	In contrast, a loop that called spin_lock_init() on each lock
+	would place all 8192 locks into a single lock class.
+
+	The moral of this story is that you should always explicitly
+	initialize your locks.
+
+One might argue that the validator should be modified to allow
+lock classes to be reused.  However, if you are tempted to make this
+argument, first review the code and think through the changes that would
+be required, keeping in mind that the lock classes to be removed are
+likely to be linked into the lock-dependency graph.  This turns out to
+be harder to do than to say.
+
+Of course, if you do run out of lock classes, the next thing to do is
+to find the offending lock classes.  First, the following command gives
+you the number of lock classes currently in use along with the maximum:
+
+	grep "lock-classes" /proc/lockdep_stats
+
+This command produces the following output on a modest system:
+
+	 lock-classes:                          748 [max: 8191]
+
+If the number allocated (748 above) increases continually over time,
+then there is likely a leak.  The following command can be used to
+identify the leaking lock classes:
+
+	grep "BD" /proc/lockdep
+
+Run the command and save the output, then compare against the output from
+a later run of this command to identify the leakers.  This same output
+can also help you find situations where runtime lock initialization has
+been omitted.