[PATCH 22/22] [PATCH] ptrace_attach: fix possible deadlock schenario with irqs

[Chris Wright]

-stable review patch.  If anyone has any objections, please let us know.
------------------

Eric Biederman points out that we can't take the task_lock while holding
tasklist_lock for writing, because another CPU that holds the task lock
might take an interrupt that then tries to take tasklist_lock for writing.

Which would be a nasty deadlock, with one CPU spinning forever in an
interrupt handler (although admittedly you need to really work at
triggering it ;)

Since the ptrace_attach() code is special and very unusual, just make it
be extra careful, and use trylock+repeat to avoid the possible deadlock.

Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Roland McGrath <roland@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Chris Wright <chrisw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
---

 kernel/ptrace.c |   20 +++++++++++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 19 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

--- linux-2.6.16.16.orig/kernel/ptrace.c
+++ linux-2.6.16.16/kernel/ptrace.c
@@ -156,8 +156,26 @@ int ptrace_attach(struct task_struct *ta
 	if (task->tgid == current->tgid)
 		goto out;
 
-	write_lock_irq(&tasklist_lock);
+repeat:
+	/*
+	 * Nasty, nasty.
+	 *
+	 * We want to hold both the task-lock and the
+	 * tasklist_lock for writing at the same time.
+	 * But that's against the rules (tasklist_lock
+	 * is taken for reading by interrupts on other
+	 * cpu's that may have task_lock).
+	 */
 	task_lock(task);
+	local_irq_disable();
+	if (!write_trylock(&tasklist_lock)) {
+		local_irq_enable();
+		task_unlock(task);
+		do {
+			cpu_relax();
+		} while (!write_can_lock(&tasklist_lock));
+		goto repeat;
+	}
 
 	/* the same process cannot be attached many times */
 	if (task->ptrace & PT_PTRACED)

--
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/