Re: Potential deadlock BUG in drivers/net/wireless/st/cw1200/sta.c (Linux 4.9)

[Iago Abal <iago.abal@gmail.com>]

Hi,

This still looks like a deadlock bug to me, could someone take a look
as well and confirm? I will help preparing a patch if needed.

Thanks,

-- iago


On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 10:58 PM, Iago Abal <iago.abal@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> With the help of a static bug finder (EBA -
> https://github.com/models-team/eba) I have found a potential deadlock
> in drivers/net/wireless/st/cw1200/
> sta.c. This happens due to a recursive mutex_lock on `priv->conf_mutex'.
>
> If this is indeed a bug, I will be happy to help with a patch.
>
> A quick (not elegant) fix could be to unlock before the call to
> `cw1200_do_unjoin' in line 1174, and lock again afterwards. It seems
> that `cw1200_join_complete' is always called with `priv->conf_mutex'
> held. Another option could be to add a Boolean parameter to
> `cw1200_do_unjoin' to choose whether this function should take the
> lock itself. Yet another option would be to have a
> `__cw1200_do_unjoin' that does not lock, and make `cw1200_do_unjoin' a
> wrapper over this that adds the locking; `cw1200_join_complete' would
> call `__cw1200_do_unjoin' instead.
>
> Someone who is actually familiar with this code may have a better
> proposal though.
>
> The trace is as follows:
>
> 1. Function `cw1200_join_complete_work' takes the first lock in line 1189:
>
>     // see https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.9-rc5/drivers/net/wireless/st/cw1200/sta.c#L1189
>     mutex_lock(& priv->conf_mutex);
>
> 2. and subsequently calls `cw1200_join_complete';
> 3. which calls `cw1200_do_unjoin' in line 1174;
> 4. and this latter function takes the lock for the second time in line 1387:
>
>     // see https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/v4.9-rc5/drivers/net/wireless/st/cw1200/sta.c#L1387
>     mutex_lock(& priv->conf_mutex);
>
> Hope it helps!
>
> --
> iago