Re: 3.6rc6 slab corruption.

From: Raghavendra K T
Date: Wed Sep 19 2012 - 22:32:43 EST


On 09/20/2012 03:19 AM, David Rientjes wrote:
On Wed, 19 Sep 2012, David Rientjes wrote:

From 0806b133b5b28081adf23d0d04a99636ed3b861b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk<konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2012 11:23:01 -0400
Subject: [PATCH 1/2] debugfs: Add lock for u32_array_read

Dave Jones spotted that the u32_array_read was doing something funny:

=============================================================================
BUG kmalloc-64 (Not tainted): Redzone overwritten
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

INFO: 0xffff88001f4b4970-0xffff88001f4b4977. First byte 0xbb instead of 0xcc
INFO: Allocated in u32_array_read+0xd1/0x110 age=0 cpu=6 pid=32767
__slab_alloc+0x516/0x5a5
__kmalloc+0x213/0x2c0
u32_array_read+0xd1/0x110
.. snip..
INFO: Freed in u32_array_read+0x99/0x110 age=0 cpu=0 pid=32749
__slab_free+0x3f/0x3bf
kfree+0x2d5/0x310
u32_array_read+0x99/0x110

Linus tracked it down and found out that "debugfs is racy for that case
[read calls in parallel on the debugfs]. At least the file->private_data
accesses are, for the case of that "u32_array" case.

In fact it is racy in ... the whole "file->private_data" access ..
If you have multiple readers on the same file, the whole

if (file->private_data) {
kfree(file->private_data);
file->private_data = NULL;
}

file->private_data = format_array_alloc("%u", data->array,
data->elements);

thing is just a disaster waiting to happen." He suggested
putting a lock which this patch does.


Since these are non-seekable files, it must also race to find *ppos == 0.

The consequence of this is that it will trigger more spinlock usage,
as this particular debugfs is used to provide a histogram of spinlock
contention. But memory corruption is a worst offender then that.

Reported-by: Dave Jones<davej@xxxxxxxxxx>
Suggested-by: Linus Torvalds<torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Tested-by: David Rientjes<rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx>


An alternative to this, though, might be to never test for *ppos == 0 in
u32_array_read() and do the format_array_alloc() in u32_array_open() to
initialize file->private_data. If that allocation fails, just return
-ENOMEM. Then you never need to add a mutex in the read path.

Any reason we can't do this?
---
fs/debugfs/file.c | 33 +++++++++++----------------------
1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/debugfs/file.c b/fs/debugfs/file.c
--- a/fs/debugfs/file.c
+++ b/fs/debugfs/file.c
@@ -526,12 +526,6 @@ struct array_data {
u32 elements;
};

-static int u32_array_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
-{
- file->private_data = NULL;
- return nonseekable_open(inode, file);
-}
-
static size_t format_array(char *buf, size_t bufsize, const char *fmt,
u32 *array, u32 array_size)
{
@@ -573,26 +567,21 @@ static char *format_array_alloc(const char *fmt, u32 *array,
return ret;
}

-static ssize_t u32_array_read(struct file *file, char __user *buf, size_t len,
- loff_t *ppos)
+static int u32_array_open(struct inode *inode, struct file *file)
{
- struct inode *inode = file->f_path.dentry->d_inode;
struct array_data *data = inode->i_private;
- size_t size;

- if (*ppos == 0) {
- if (file->private_data) {
- kfree(file->private_data);
- file->private_data = NULL;
- }
-
- file->private_data = format_array_alloc("%u", data->array,
- data->elements);
- }
+ file->private_data = format_array_alloc("%u", data->array,
+ data->elements);
+ if (!file->private_data)
+ return -ENOMEM;
+ return nonseekable_open(inode, file);
+}

- size = 0;
- if (file->private_data)
- size = strlen(file->private_data);
+static ssize_t u32_array_read(struct file *file, char __user *buf, size_t len,
+ loff_t *ppos)
+{
+ size_t size = strlen(file->private_data);

return simple_read_from_buffer(buf, len, ppos,
file->private_data, size);



Only problem, I find is histogram data expands dynamically (because it
changes). I think having static allocation of 352 bytes as suggested
Linus is a good idea.

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