[PATCH] fix sysfs_readdir oops (was Re: sysfs reclaim crash)

From: Maneesh Soni
Date: Tue Apr 03 2007 - 03:38:40 EST


On Sat, Mar 24, 2007 at 08:35:35AM +0530, Maneesh Soni wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 23, 2007 at 12:43:27PM -0700, Ethan Solomita wrote:
> > I ran stress testing overnight and came up with a similar failure
> > (s_dentry == NULL) but in a different location. A NULL pointer
> > dereference happened in sysfs_readdir():
> >
> > | if (next->s_dentry)
> > | ino =
> > next->s_dentry->d_inode->i_ino;
> >
> > It seems that d_inode was NULL. I don't have the pointer to d_inode
> > to look at, but I have next and, lo and behold, its s_dentry is now
> > NULL, which it clearly wasn't when the if-clause above ran.
> >
> > I tried to reconstruct the sysfs_dirents starting with "next". I
> > filled in all the structure contents that I had data for:
> >
> > sysfs_dirent 0xffff81000fc61690:
> > s_count 1
> > s_sibling ffff81000fc616e8 / ffff81000e0c7468
> > s_children ffff81000fc616a8 / ffff81000fc616a8
> > s_element ffff81000f4ad1b0
> > DOR__ATA1RTS
> > ffffffff8800b600
> > 124
> > s_type 4
> > s_mode 8124
> > s_dentry NULL
> > s_iattr NULL
> > s_event 0
> >
> > s_sibling.prev:
> > s_count 1
> > s_sibling ffff81000fc61738 / ffff81000fc61698
> > s_children ffff81000fc616f8 / ffff81000fc616f8
> > s_element ffff81000f4ad148
> > s_type 4
> > s_mode 8124
> > <unknown>
> >
> > s_sibling.next:
> > s_count 1
> > s_sibling ffff81000fc61698 / ffff81000fc61648
> > s_children ffff81000e0c7478 / ffff81000e0c7478
> > s_element NULL
> > s_type 0
> > s_mode 0
> > s_dentry NULL
> > s_iattr NULL
> > s_event 0
> >
> > s_sibling.next.next:
> > s_count 1
> > s_sibling ffff81000e0c7468 / ffff81000fc615f8
> > s_children ffff81000fc61658 / ffff81000fc61658
> > s_element ffff81000f4ad218
> > DOR__ATA1RTS
> > ffffffff8800b600
> > 124
> > s_type 4
> > s_mode 8124
> > s_dentry NULL
> > s_iattr NULL
> > s_event 0
> >
> > s_sibling.next.next.next:
> > s_count 1
> > s_sibling ffff81000fc61648 / ffff81000fc610f8
> > s_children ffff81000fc61608 / ffff81000fc61608
> > s_element ffff81000f4ad280
> > CK??ATCR
> > ffffffff8800b600
> > 124
> > s_type 4
> > s_mode 8124
> > s_dentry NULL
> > s_iattr NULL
> > s_event 0
> >
> > I should acknowledge that this is based upon 2.6.18 with some newer
> > code backported. If there are fixes since 2.6.18 that we should know
> > about I can try backporting them into our kernel.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > -- Ethan
>
>

Hi Ethan / Andrew,

I have modified the previous patch (which was dropped from -mm) and now keeping
the statement making s_dentry as NULL in sysfs_d_iput(), so this should
_safely_ fix sysfs_readdir() oops.

Please see the other mail for sysfs_d_iput() BUG hit.

Thanks
Maneesh

--
Maneesh Soni
Linux Technology Center,
IBM India Systems and Technology Lab,
Bangalore, India




o sysfs_d_iput() is invoked in dentry reclaim path under memory pressure. This
happens without i_mutex. It also nullifies s_dentry to indicate that
the associated dentry is evicted. sysfs_readdir() accesses the s_dentry,
and gets the inode number from the associated dentry->d_inode, if
there is one, else it invokes iunique(). This can create a race situation,
and crash while accessing the d_inode in sysfs_readdir().

o The race happens when the dentry is getting reclaimed and detached from
the corresponding sysfs_dirent though sysfs_dirent is still a valid
node. Accessing dentry fields are ok as it is under RCU but the inode is
not hence we may see oops accessing dentry->d_inode->i_no.

o The following patch always use i_unique() to get the inode number in
sysfs_readdir. This is ok as sysfs doesnot have permanent inode numbering.
It could be slower but avoids the oops.



Signed-off-by: Maneesh Soni <maneesh@xxxxxxxxxx>
---

linux-2.6.21-rc5-mm3-maneesh/fs/sysfs/dir.c | 5 +----
1 files changed, 1 insertion(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff -puN fs/sysfs/dir.c~fix-sysfs_readdir-oops fs/sysfs/dir.c
--- linux-2.6.21-rc5-mm3/fs/sysfs/dir.c~fix-sysfs_readdir-oops 2007-04-03 10:39:52.000000000 +0530
+++ linux-2.6.21-rc5-mm3-maneesh/fs/sysfs/dir.c 2007-04-03 10:39:52.000000000 +0530
@@ -538,10 +538,7 @@ static int sysfs_readdir(struct file * f

name = sysfs_get_name(next);
len = strlen(name);
- if (next->s_dentry)
- ino = next->s_dentry->d_inode->i_ino;
- else
- ino = iunique(sysfs_sb, 2);
+ ino = iunique(sysfs_sb, 2);

if (filldir(dirent, name, len, filp->f_pos, ino,
dt_type(next)) < 0)
_
-
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