Re: [RFC][PATCH 1/9] klp: Fix obvious RCU fail

[Petr Mladek]

On Mon 2015-03-02 09:35:30, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 01, 2015 at 09:09:24PM +0100, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> > On Sat, 28 Feb 2015, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > 
> > > While one must hold RCU-sched (aka. preempt_disable) for find_symbol()
> > > one must equally hold it over the use of the object returned.
> > > 
> > > The moment you release the RCU-sched read lock, the object can be dead
> > > and gone.
> > > 
> > > Cc: Seth Jennings <sjenning@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Masami Hiramatsu <masami.hiramatsu.pt@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@xxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Petr Mladek <pmladek@xxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@xxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Signed-off-by: Peter Zijlstra (Intel) <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > 
> > Acked-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@xxxxxxx>
> > 
> > I guess you'll be taking this together with the series, so I am not 
> > applying it.
> 
> Feel free to take it; this series might take a wee while longer to
> mature.
> 
> That said; I do have a follow up question on that code. So now you've
> successfully obtained an address in module space; but the moment you
> release that RCU-sched lock, the module can be gone.
> 
> How does the whole live patching stuff deal with module removal during
> patching?

There is a notifier, see klp_module_notify(). It applies existing
patches when an affected module is loaded. Also it removes patches
when an affected module is going. It is serialized with the other
operations using the klp_mutex lock.

Hmm, when I think about it. I am afraid that there is a race. For
example, the going module might be unpatched by the notifier but
a new patch might get applied when it is still visible by kallsyms.
I am going to look at it.

Best Regards,
Petr
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