Re: NULL pointer dereference in pick_next_task_fair

From: Peter Zijlstra
Date: Tue Oct 29 2019 - 07:34:34 EST


On Mon, Oct 28, 2019 at 05:46:03PM +0000, Quentin Perret wrote:
> The issue is very transient and relatively hard to reproduce.
>
> After digging a bit, the offending commit seems to be:
>
> 67692435c411 ("sched: Rework pick_next_task() slow-path")
>
> By 'offending' I mean that reverting it makes the issue go away. The
> issue comes from the fact that pick_next_entity() returns a NULL se in
> the 'simple' path of pick_next_task_fair(), which causes obvious
> problems in the subsequent call to set_next_entity().
>
> I'll dig more, but if anybody understands the issue in the meatime feel
> free to send me a patch to try out :)

Can you please see if this makes any difference?

---
kernel/sched/core.c | 6 ++++--
kernel/sched/fair.c | 2 +-
kernel/sched/idle.c | 3 +--
3 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/sched/core.c b/kernel/sched/core.c
index 7880f4f64d0e..abd2d4f80381 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/core.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/core.c
@@ -3922,8 +3922,10 @@ pick_next_task(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev, struct rq_flags *rf)
goto restart;

/* Assumes fair_sched_class->next == idle_sched_class */
- if (unlikely(!p))
- p = idle_sched_class.pick_next_task(rq, prev, rf);
+ if (unlikely(!p)) {
+ prev->sched_class->put_prev_task(rq, prev, rf);
+ p = idle_sched_class.pick_next_task(rq, NULL, NULL);
+ }

return p;
}
diff --git a/kernel/sched/fair.c b/kernel/sched/fair.c
index 83ab35e2374f..2aad94bb7165 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/fair.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/fair.c
@@ -6820,7 +6820,7 @@ pick_next_task_fair(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev, struct rq_flags *rf
simple:
#endif
if (prev)
- put_prev_task(rq, prev);
+ prev->sched_class->put_prev_task(rq, prev, rf);

do {
se = pick_next_entity(cfs_rq, NULL);
diff --git a/kernel/sched/idle.c b/kernel/sched/idle.c
index 8dad5aa600ea..e8dfc84f375a 100644
--- a/kernel/sched/idle.c
+++ b/kernel/sched/idle.c
@@ -390,8 +390,7 @@ pick_next_task_idle(struct rq *rq, struct task_struct *prev, struct rq_flags *rf
{
struct task_struct *next = rq->idle;

- if (prev)
- put_prev_task(rq, prev);
+ WARN_ON_ONCE(prev || rf);

set_next_task_idle(rq, next);