Re: [PATCH 01/16] freezer: fix current->state restoration race in refrigerator()

From: Rafael J. Wysocki
Date: Fri Aug 19 2011 - 17:07:22 EST


On Friday, August 19, 2011, Tejun Heo wrote:
> refrigerator() saves current->state before entering frozen state and
> restores it before returning using __set_current_state(); however,
> this is racy, for example, please consider the following sequence.
>
> set_current_state(TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE);
> try_to_sleep();

Did you mean try_to_freeze() here?

> if (kthread_should_stop())
> break;
> schedule();
>
> If kthread_stop() races with ->state restoration, the restoration can
> restore ->state to TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE after kthread_stop() sets it to
> TASK_RUNNING but kthread_should_stop() may still see zero
> ->should_stop because there's no memory barrier between restoring
> TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE and kthread_should_stop() test.
>
> This isn't restricted to kthread_should_stop(). current->state is
> often used in memory barrier based synchronization and silently
> restoring it w/o mb breaks them.
>
> Use set_current_state() instead.
>
> Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> kernel/freezer.c | 8 +++++++-
> 1 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/kernel/freezer.c b/kernel/freezer.c
> index 7b01de9..575f863 100644
> --- a/kernel/freezer.c
> +++ b/kernel/freezer.c
> @@ -58,7 +58,13 @@ void refrigerator(void)
> current->flags &= ~PF_FREEZING;
>
> pr_debug("%s left refrigerator\n", current->comm);
> - __set_current_state(save);
> +
> + /*
> + * Restore saved task state before returning. The mb'd version
> + * needs to be used; otherwise, it might silently break
> + * synchronization which depends on ordered task state change.
> + */
> + set_current_state(save);

I think the change is correct.

> }
> EXPORT_SYMBOL(refrigerator);

Thanks,
Rafael
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