Re: [REGRESSION] 5.16rc1: SA_IMMUTABLE breaks debuggers

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Wed Nov 17 2021 - 20:11:46 EST


On Wed, Nov 17, 2021 at 4:37 PM Kyle Huey <me@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> This fixes most of the issues with rr, but it still changes the ptrace
> behavior for the double-SIGSEGV case

Hmm. I think that's because of how "force_sigsgv()" works.

I absolutely detest that function.

So we have signal_setup_done() doing that

if (failed)
force_sigsegv(ksig->sig);

and then force_sigsegv() has that completely insane

if (sig == SIGSEGV)
force_fatal_sig(SIGSEGV);
else
force_sig(SIGSEGV);

behavior.

And I think I know the _reason_ for that complete insanity: when
SIGSEGV takes a SIGSEGV, and there is a handler, we need to stop
trying to send more SIGSEGV's.

But it does mean that with my change, that second SIGSEGV now ends up
being that SA_IMMUTABLE kind, so yeah, it broke the debugger test -
where catching the second SIGSEGV is actually somewhat sensible (ok,
not really, but at least understandable)

End result: I think we want not a boolean, but a three-way choice for
that force_sig_info_to_task() thing:

- unconditionally fatal (for things that just want to force an exit
and used to do do_exit())

- ignore valid and unblocked handler (for that SIGSEGV recursion
case, aka force "sigdfl")

- catching signal ok

So my one-liner isn't sufficient. It wants some kind of nasty enum.

At least the enum can be entirely internal to kernel/signal.c, I
think. No need to expose this all to anything else.

Linus