Re: [BUGFIX PATCH tip/master V2 3/3] kprobes/arm: Fix a possible deadlock case in kretprobe

[Russell King - ARM Linux]

On Fri, Feb 10, 2017 at 01:32:22AM +0900, Masami Hiramatsu wrote:
> Fix a possibility of deadlock case in kretprobe on arm
> implementation. There may be a chance that the kretprobe
> hash table lock can cause a dead lock.
> 
> The senario is that a user puts 2 kretprobes, one on normal
> function and one on a function which can be called from
> somewhare which can interrupt in irq disabled critical
> section like FIQ.

If we:
- hit a kernel tracing feature from FIQ context
- the tracing feature takes a lock
- the lock is also taken elsewhere on the same CPU with IRQs disabled

we will quite simply deadlock.

In this case, kretprobe_hash_lock() takes the hlist_lock using
raw_spin_lock_irqsave().

Now, from what I can see in the kprobes code, this lock is taken in
other contexts (eg, kprobe_flush_task()), which means even with this
fix, it's still risky if a kprobe is placed on a FIQ-called function.

> In this case, if the kernel hits the 1st kretprobe on a
> normal function return which calls trampoline_handler(),
> acquire a spinlock on the hash table in kretprobe_hash_lock()
> and disable irqs. After that, if the 2nd kretprobe is kicked
> from FIQ, it also calls trampoline_handler() and tries to
> acquire the same spinlock (since the hash is based on
> current task, same as the 1st kretprobe), it causes
> a deadlock.

So my deadlock scenario is:

- we're in the middle of kprobe_flush_task()
- FIQ happens, calls trampoline_handler()
- deadlock in kretprobe_hash_lock()

>From what I can see, kretprobes in FIQ are just unsafe.

I suspect that avoiding these deadlocks means that we have to deny
kprobes from FIQ context - making trampoline_handler() return
immediately if in_nmi() is true.

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