Re: 3.6rc6 slab corruption.

[Raghavendra K T]

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.

Tested-by: Raghavendra <raghavendra.kt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

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