Re: [PATCH 4.19 142/206] gfs2: fix use-after-free on transaction ail lists

[Greg Kroah-Hartman]

On Fri, Sep 11, 2020 at 08:08:35AM -0400, Bob Peterson wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> > On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 09:43:19PM +0200, Salvatore Bonaccorso wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > > 
> > > On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 09:57:50PM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > > From: Bob Peterson <rpeterso@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > 
> > > > [ Upstream commit 83d060ca8d90fa1e3feac227f995c013100862d3 ]
> > > > 
> > > > Before this patch, transactions could be merged into the system
> > > > transaction by function gfs2_merge_trans(), but the transaction ail
> > > > lists were never merged. Because the ail flushing mechanism can run
> > > > separately, bd elements can be attached to the transaction's buffer
> > > > list during the transaction (trans_add_meta, etc) but quickly moved
> > > > to its ail lists. Later, in function gfs2_trans_end, the transaction
> > > > can be freed (by gfs2_trans_end) while it still has bd elements
> > > > queued to its ail lists, which can cause it to either lose track of
> > > > the bd elements altogether (memory leak) or worse, reference the bd
> > > > elements after the parent transaction has been freed.
> > > > 
> > > > Although I've not seen any serious consequences, the problem becomes
> > > > apparent with the previous patch's addition of:
> > > > 
> > > > 	gfs2_assert_warn(sdp, list_empty(&tr->tr_ail1_list));
> > > > 
> > > > to function gfs2_trans_free().
> > > > 
> > > > This patch adds logic into gfs2_merge_trans() to move the merged
> > > > transaction's ail lists to the sdp transaction. This prevents the
> > > > use-after-free. To do this properly, we need to hold the ail lock,
> > > > so we pass sdp into the function instead of the transaction itself.
> > > > 
> > > > Signed-off-by: Bob Peterson <rpeterso@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Andreas Gruenbacher <agruenba@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@xxxxxxxxxx>
> (snip)
> > > 
> > > In Debian two user confirmed issues on writing on a GFS2 partition
> > > with this commit applied. The initial Debian report is at
> > > https://bugs.debian.org/968567 and Daniel Craig reported it into
> > > Bugzilla at https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209217 .
> > > 
> > > Writing to a gfs2 filesystem fails and results in a soft lookup of the
> > > machine for kernels with that commit applied. I cannot reporduce the
> > > issue myself due not having a respective setup available, but Daniel
> > > described a minimal serieos of steps to reproduce the issue.
> > > 
> > > This might affect as well other stable series where this commit was
> > > applied, as there was a similar report for someone running 5.4.58 in
> > > https://www.redhat.com/archives/linux-cluster/2020-August/msg00000.html
> > 
> > Can you report this to the gfs2 developers?
> > 
> > thanks,
> > 
> > greg k-h
> 
> Hi Greg,
> 
> No need. The patch came from the gfs2 developers. I think he just wants
> it added to a stable release.

What commit needs to be added to a stable release?

confused,

greg k-h