From: Nam Cao <namcao@linutronix.de>
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2026 17:51:46 +0000 (+0200)
Subject: eventpoll: Fix epoll_wait() report false negative
X-Git-Url: http://git.ipfire.org/gitweb/?a=commitdiff_plain;h=0c4aefe3c2d0f272a2ad73699a12d4446ffdbe7b;p=thirdparty%2Fkernel%2Flinux.git

eventpoll: Fix epoll_wait() report false negative

ep_events_available() checks for available events by looking at
ep->rdllist and ep_is_scanning(). However, this is done without a lock
and can report false negative if ep_start_scan() or ep_done_scan() are
executed by another task concurrently. For example:
_________________________________________________________________________
                                   |ep_start_scan()
                                   |  list_splice_init(&ep->rdllist, ...)
ep_events_available()              |
  !list_empty_careful(&ep->rdllist)|
  || ep_is_scanning(ep)            |
	                           |  ep_enter_scan(ep)
___________________________________|_____________________________________

Another example:
_________________________________________________________________________
ep_events_available()              |
                                   |ep_start_scan()
                                   |  list_splice_init(&ep->rdllist, ...)
	                           |  ep_enter_scan(ep)
  !list_empty_careful(&ep->rdllist)|
                                   |ep_done_scan()
                                   |  ep_exit_scan(ep)
                                   |  list_splice(..., &ep->rdllist)
  || ep_is_scanning(ep)            |
___________________________________|_____________________________________

In the above examples, ep_events_available() sees no event despite
events being available. In case epoll_wait() is called with timeout=0,
epoll_wait() will wrongly return "no event" to user.

Introduce a sequence lock to resolve this issue.

Measuring the time consumption of 10 million loop iterations doing
epoll_wait(), the following performance drop is observed:

   timeout  #event  before    after    diff
     0ms      0     3727ms   3974ms   +6.6%
     0ms      1     8099ms   9134ms    +13%
     1ms      1    13525ms  13586ms  +0.45%

Considering the use case of epoll_wait() (wait for events, do something
with the events, repeat), it should only contribute to a small portion of
user's CPU consumption. Therefore this performance drop is not alarming.

Fixes: c5a282e9635e ("fs/epoll: reduce the scope of wq lock in epoll_wait()")
Suggested-by: Mateusz Guzik <mjguzik@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Nam Cao <namcao@linutronix.de>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/4363cd8e34a21d4f0d257be1b33e84dc25030fdf.1780422138.git.namcao@linutronix.de
Signed-off-by: Christian Brauner (Amutable) <brauner@kernel.org>
---

diff --git a/fs/eventpoll.c b/fs/eventpoll.c
index baa97d0edade..df364a8783b5 100644
--- a/fs/eventpoll.c
+++ b/fs/eventpoll.c
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@
 #include <linux/compat.h>
 #include <linux/rculist.h>
 #include <linux/capability.h>
+#include <linux/seqlock.h>
 #include <net/busy_poll.h>
 
 /*
@@ -312,6 +313,9 @@ struct eventpoll {
 	/* Lock which protects rdllist and ovflist */
 	spinlock_t lock;
 
+	/* Protect switching between rdllist and ovflist */
+	seqcount_spinlock_t seq;
+
 	/* RB tree root used to store monitored fd structs */
 	struct rb_root_cached rbr;
 
@@ -590,7 +594,10 @@ static inline void epi_clear_ovflist(struct epitem *epi)
 /* True iff @ep has ready events that epoll_wait() might harvest. */
 static inline bool ep_events_available(struct eventpoll *ep)
 {
-	return !list_empty_careful(&ep->rdllist) || ep_is_scanning(ep);
+	unsigned int seq = read_seqcount_begin(&ep->seq);
+
+	return !list_empty_careful(&ep->rdllist) || ep_is_scanning(ep) ||
+		read_seqcount_retry(&ep->seq, seq);
 }
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_NET_RX_BUSY_POLL
@@ -947,8 +954,12 @@ static void ep_start_scan(struct eventpoll *ep, struct list_head *scan_batch)
 	 */
 	lockdep_assert_irqs_enabled();
 	spin_lock_irq(&ep->lock);
+	write_seqcount_begin(&ep->seq);
+
 	list_splice_init(&ep->rdllist, scan_batch);
 	ep_enter_scan(ep);
+
+	write_seqcount_end(&ep->seq);
 	spin_unlock_irq(&ep->lock);
 }
 
@@ -979,6 +990,9 @@ static void ep_done_scan(struct eventpoll *ep,
 			ep_pm_stay_awake(epi);
 		}
 	}
+
+	write_seqcount_begin(&ep->seq);
+
 	/* Back out of scan mode; callbacks target ep->rdllist again. */
 	ep_exit_scan(ep);
 
@@ -986,6 +1000,9 @@ static void ep_done_scan(struct eventpoll *ep,
 	 * Quickly re-inject items left on "scan_batch".
 	 */
 	list_splice(scan_batch, &ep->rdllist);
+
+	write_seqcount_end(&ep->seq);
+
 	__pm_relax(ep->ws);
 
 	if (!list_empty(&ep->rdllist)) {
@@ -1405,6 +1422,7 @@ static int ep_alloc(struct eventpoll **pep)
 
 	mutex_init(&ep->mtx);
 	spin_lock_init(&ep->lock);
+	seqcount_spinlock_init(&ep->seq, &ep->lock);
 	init_waitqueue_head(&ep->wq);
 	init_waitqueue_head(&ep->poll_wait);
 	INIT_LIST_HEAD(&ep->rdllist);