[PATCH AUTOSEL 5.15 1/8] signal: break out of wait loops on kthread_stop()

From: Sasha Levin
Date: Fri Oct 14 2022 - 09:54:43 EST


From: "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@xxxxxxxxx>

[ Upstream commit a7c01fa93aeb03ab76cd3cb2107990dd160498e6 ]

I was recently surprised to learn that msleep_interruptible(),
wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(), and related functions
simply hung when I called kthread_stop() on kthreads using them. The
solution to fixing the case with msleep_interruptible() was more simply
to move to schedule_timeout_interruptible(). Why?

The reason is that msleep_interruptible(), and many functions just like
it, has a loop like this:

while (timeout && !signal_pending(current))
timeout = schedule_timeout_interruptible(timeout);

The call to kthread_stop() woke up the thread, so schedule_timeout_
interruptible() returned early, but because signal_pending() returned
true, it went back into another timeout, which was never woken up.

This wait loop pattern is common to various pieces of code, and I
suspect that the subtle misuse in a kthread that caused a deadlock in
the code I looked at last week is also found elsewhere.

So this commit causes signal_pending() to return true when
kthread_stop() is called, by setting TIF_NOTIFY_SIGNAL.

The same also probably applies to the similar kthread_park()
functionality, but that can be addressed later, as its semantics are
slightly different.

Cc: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx>
v1: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220627120020.608117-1-Jason@xxxxxxxxx
v2: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220627145716.641185-1-Jason@xxxxxxxxx
v3: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220628161441.892925-1-Jason@xxxxxxxxx
v4: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220711202136.64458-1-Jason@xxxxxxxxx
v5: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220711232123.136330-1-Jason@xxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
kernel/kthread.c | 1 +
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

diff --git a/kernel/kthread.c b/kernel/kthread.c
index 5b37a8567168..c8ca1007e2dd 100644
--- a/kernel/kthread.c
+++ b/kernel/kthread.c
@@ -644,6 +644,7 @@ int kthread_stop(struct task_struct *k)
kthread = to_kthread(k);
set_bit(KTHREAD_SHOULD_STOP, &kthread->flags);
kthread_unpark(k);
+ set_tsk_thread_flag(k, TIF_NOTIFY_SIGNAL);
wake_up_process(k);
wait_for_completion(&kthread->exited);
ret = k->exit_code;
--
2.35.1