[PATCH 4.10 83/93] tty: pty: Fix ldisc flush after userspace become aware of the data already

From: Greg Kroah-Hartman
Date: Thu May 18 2017 - 07:35:30 EST


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

------------------

From: Wang YanQing <udknight@xxxxxxxxx>

commit 77dae6134440420bac334581a3ccee94cee1c054 upstream.

While using emacs, cat or others' commands in konsole with recent
kernels, I have met many times that CTRL-C freeze konsole. After
konsole freeze I can't type anything, then I have to open a new one,
it is very annoying.

See bug report:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=175283

The platform in that bug report is Solaris, but now the pty in linux
has the same problem or the same behavior as Solaris :)

It has high possibility to trigger the problem follow steps below:
Note: In my test, BigFile is a text file whose size is bigger than 1G
1:open konsole
1:cat BigFile
2:CTRL-C

After some digging, I find out the reason is that commit 1d1d14da12e7
("pty: Fix buffer flush deadlock") changes the behavior of pty_flush_buffer.

Thread A Thread B
-------- --------
1:n_tty_poll return POLLIN
2:CTRL-C trigger pty_flush_buffer
tty_buffer_flush
n_tty_flush_buffer
3:attempt to check count of chars:
ioctl(fd, TIOCINQ, &available)
available is equal to 0

4:read(fd, buffer, avaiable)
return 0

5:konsole close fd

Yes, I know we could use the same patch included in the BUG report as
a workaround for linux platform too. But I think the data in ldisc is
belong to application of another side, we shouldn't clear it when we
want to flush write buffer of this side in pty_flush_buffer. So I think
it is better to disable ldisc flush in pty_flush_buffer, because its new
hehavior bring no benefit except that it mess up the behavior between
POLLIN, and TIOCINQ or FIONREAD.

Also I find no flush_buffer function in others' tty driver has the
same behavior as current pty_flush_buffer.

Fixes: 1d1d14da12e7 ("pty: Fix buffer flush deadlock")
Signed-off-by: Wang YanQing <udknight@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

---
drivers/tty/pty.c | 7 +------
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 6 deletions(-)

--- a/drivers/tty/pty.c
+++ b/drivers/tty/pty.c
@@ -216,16 +216,11 @@ static int pty_signal(struct tty_struct
static void pty_flush_buffer(struct tty_struct *tty)
{
struct tty_struct *to = tty->link;
- struct tty_ldisc *ld;

if (!to)
return;

- ld = tty_ldisc_ref(to);
- tty_buffer_flush(to, ld);
- if (ld)
- tty_ldisc_deref(ld);
-
+ tty_buffer_flush(to, NULL);
if (to->packet) {
spin_lock_irq(&tty->ctrl_lock);
tty->ctrl_status |= TIOCPKT_FLUSHWRITE;