Re: finish_task_switch && prev_state (Was: sched, timers: use after free in __lock_task_sighand when exiting a process)

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 03:12:40PM +0200, Oleg Nesterov wrote:
> Ah, I am stupid, please ignore.
> 
> Of course a TASK_DEAD task can not schedule, but we can race with RUNNING ->
> DEAD transition. So we should only do put_task_struct() if "prev" was already
> TASK_DEAD before we drop the rq locks.

Not so stupid; that is, when I read your question yesterday I didn't
have a ready answer and queued the email to look at later.

This does mean the comment isn't clear enough at the very least.

Does this make it better?

---
 kernel/sched/core.c | 14 ++++++++------
 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
index 7bc599dc4aa4..aa67f1cfa58e 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/core.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
@@ -2211,13 +2211,15 @@ static void finish_task_switch(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev)
 
 	/*
 	 * A task struct has one reference for the use as "current".
+	 *
 	 * If a task dies, then it sets TASK_DEAD in tsk->state and calls
-	 * schedule one last time. The schedule call will never return, and
-	 * the scheduled task must drop that reference.
-	 * The test for TASK_DEAD must occur while the runqueue locks are
-	 * still held, otherwise prev could be scheduled on another cpu, die
-	 * there before we look at prev->state, and then the reference would
-	 * be dropped twice.
+	 * schedule one last time. The schedule call will never return, and the
+	 * scheduled task must drop that reference.
+	 *
+	 * The test for TASK_DEAD must occur while the runqueue locks are still
+	 * held, otherwise we can race with RUNNING -> DEAD transitions, and
+	 * then the reference would be dropped twice.
+	 *
 	 *		Manfred Spraul <manfred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
 	 */
 	prev_state = prev->state;

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