Re: [PATCH 0/2] virtio_pci_modern: fix vp_reset() hang on unresponsive device

On Sun, Aug 02, 2026 at 06:28:03PM +0000, Abhin Parekadan Jose wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 02, 2026 at 01:47:01PM -0400, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Sun, Aug 02, 2026 at 05:40:57PM +0000, Abhin Parekadan Jose wrote:
> > > While investigating a syzbot report of a WARN_ON_ONCE firing in
> > > virtio_dev_remove() [1],
> >
> >
> > And I responded to that syzbot report, and I quote:
> >
> > So it writes 0 into pci command, effectively killing the device,
> > and then is unhappy that the driver prints warnings?
> > Who thought it's a good idea? Why?
> 
> I was learning how to reproduce syzbot bugs when I found this
> issue by writing 0 to PCI_COMMAND to simulate an unresponsive
> device.

Yea I have no idea where does this syzbot "bug report"
come from. Poking at random at device registers is ... not
a very good idea.

> While doing that I noticed that echo 1 > /sys/../remove
> hung completely rather than just printing the warning. Since the
> device_status register lives in the virtio common config MMIO
> space and has defined values(based on the bits set) in the spec.
> I thought it made sense for virtio to detect this and handle it
> gracefully rather than spin forever, so I wrote up a small fix
> for that.
> 
> > > I found a related but more serious issue:
> > > vp_reset() in the modern virtio-pci transport can hang indefinitely
> > > if PCI_COMMAND memory-space decode is disabled while the device is
> > > bound (e.g. surprise removal, hardware fault, or -- as reproduced
> > > here -- a direct write to the PCI_COMMAND register). The status
> > > register poll loop has no way to distinguish "device still resetting"
> > > from "device unreachable," so it never terminates.
> > >
> > > Patch 1 adds a VIRTIO_STATUS_ERROR() check that recognizes an
> > > all-ones status read as invalid (per spec, bits 4-5 are reserved and
> > > can never legitimately be set) and warns once at the point the bad
> > > read actually happens.
> > >
> > > Patch 2 uses that check to break out of vp_reset()'s poll loop
> > > instead of spinning forever.
> >
> > Was all this including the cover letter written with ai assistance?
> > if yes pls disclose this.
> 
> Yes, I used AI assistance (Claude). The commit messages were written
> by me and then refined with AI for spelling and grammar; the cover
> letter was generated by Claude and reviewed by me.

I suggest limiting it to fixing spelling and grammar exclusively.  It
tends to do things like dramatize, e.g. "more serious issue", like it
did here.

> The code, testing,
> and debugging were done by me -- I reproduced the hang in QEMU,
> debugged to reach the hanging loop, and wrote the actual fix.
> 
> I should have disclosed this upfront. I'll do so in future
> submissions.
> 
> Do I need to add Assisted-by: Claude <claude-4-6-sonnet> to the
> commit messages?

    Assisted-by: Claude:claude-sonnet-4-6


> 
> P.S. This is my first kernel patch set.


Thanks, keep at it. Bonus points if you find a real fix for
issues raised in thread about surprise removal, see e.g. here
[email protected]
but don't expect it to be easy.


-- 
MST