[PATCH v2] tty: serial: uartlite: register uart driver in init

From: Elodie Decerle
Date: Wed Mar 26 2025 - 06:06:27 EST


From: Jakub Lewalski <jakub.lewalski@xxxxxxxxx>

When two instances of uart devices are probing, a concurrency race can
occur. If one thread calls uart_register_driver function, which first
allocates and assigns memory to 'uart_state' member of uart_driver
structure, the other instance can bypass uart driver registration and
call ulite_assign. This calls uart_add_one_port, which expects the uart
driver to be fully initialized. This leads to a kernel panic due to a
null pointer dereference:

[ 8.143581] BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: 00000000000002b8
[ 8.156982] #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode
[ 8.156984] #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page
[ 8.156986] PGD 0 P4D 0
...
[ 8.180668] RIP: 0010:mutex_lock+0x19/0x30
[ 8.188624] Call Trace:
[ 8.188629] ? __die_body.cold+0x1a/0x1f
[ 8.195260] ? page_fault_oops+0x15c/0x290
[ 8.209183] ? __irq_resolve_mapping+0x47/0x80
[ 8.209187] ? exc_page_fault+0x64/0x140
[ 8.209190] ? asm_exc_page_fault+0x22/0x30
[ 8.209196] ? mutex_lock+0x19/0x30
[ 8.223116] uart_add_one_port+0x60/0x440
[ 8.223122] ? proc_tty_register_driver+0x43/0x50
[ 8.223126] ? tty_register_driver+0x1ca/0x1e0
[ 8.246250] ulite_probe+0x357/0x4b0 [uartlite]

To prevent it, move uart driver registration in to init function. This
will ensure that uart_driver is always registered when probe function
is called.

Signed-off-by: Jakub Lewalski <jakub.lewalski@xxxxxxxxx>
Tested-by: Elodie Decerle <elodie.decerle@xxxxxxxxx>

Changes since v1:
- Remove mutex lock in uart_register_driver
- Move uart driver registration to init function (Greg's feedback)
---
drivers/tty/serial/uartlite.c | 25 ++++++++++++-------------
1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)

diff --git a/drivers/tty/serial/uartlite.c b/drivers/tty/serial/uartlite.c
index a41e7fc373b7..39c1fd1ff9ce 100644
--- a/drivers/tty/serial/uartlite.c
+++ b/drivers/tty/serial/uartlite.c
@@ -880,16 +880,6 @@ static int ulite_probe(struct platform_device *pdev)
pm_runtime_set_active(&pdev->dev);
pm_runtime_enable(&pdev->dev);

- if (!ulite_uart_driver.state) {
- dev_dbg(&pdev->dev, "uartlite: calling uart_register_driver()\n");
- ret = uart_register_driver(&ulite_uart_driver);
- if (ret < 0) {
- dev_err(&pdev->dev, "Failed to register driver\n");
- clk_disable_unprepare(pdata->clk);
- return ret;
- }
- }
-
ret = ulite_assign(&pdev->dev, id, res->start, irq, pdata);

pm_runtime_mark_last_busy(&pdev->dev);
@@ -929,16 +919,25 @@ static struct platform_driver ulite_platform_driver = {

static int __init ulite_init(void)
{
+ int ret;
+
+ pr_debug("uartlite: calling uart_register_driver()\n");
+ ret = uart_register_driver(&ulite_uart_driver);
+ if (ret)
+ return ret;

pr_debug("uartlite: calling platform_driver_register()\n");
- return platform_driver_register(&ulite_platform_driver);
+ ret = platform_driver_register(&ulite_platform_driver);
+ if (ret)
+ uart_unregister_driver(&ulite_uart_driver);
+
+ return ret;
}

static void __exit ulite_exit(void)
{
platform_driver_unregister(&ulite_platform_driver);
- if (ulite_uart_driver.state)
- uart_unregister_driver(&ulite_uart_driver);
+ uart_unregister_driver(&ulite_uart_driver);
}

module_init(ulite_init);
--
2.43.0