Re: rcu_read_lock lost its compiler barrier

["Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@linux.ibm.com>]

On Thu, Jun 06, 2019 at 10:19:43AM -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Jun 2019, Andrea Parri wrote:
> 
> > This seems a sensible change to me: looking forward to seeing a patch,
> > on top of -rcu/dev, for further review and testing!
> > 
> > We could also add (to LKMM) the barrier() for rcu_read_{lock,unlock}()
> > discussed in this thread (maybe once the RCU code and the informal doc
> > will have settled in such direction).
> 
> Yes.  Also for SRCU.  That point had not escaped me.

And it does seem pretty settled.  There are quite a few examples where
there are normal accesses at either end of the RCU read-side critical
sections, for example, the one in the requirements diffs below.

For SRCU, srcu_read_lock() and srcu_read_unlock() have implied compiler
barriers since 2006.  ;-)

							Thanx, Paul

------------------------------------------------------------------------

diff --git a/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.html b/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.html
index 5a9238a2883c..080b39cc1dbb 100644
--- a/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.html
+++ b/Documentation/RCU/Design/Requirements/Requirements.html
@@ -2129,6 +2129,8 @@ Some of the relevant points of interest are as follows:
 <li>	<a href="#Hotplug CPU">Hotplug CPU</a>.
 <li>	<a href="#Scheduler and RCU">Scheduler and RCU</a>.
 <li>	<a href="#Tracing and RCU">Tracing and RCU</a>.
+<li>	<a href="#Accesses to User Mamory and RCU">
+Accesses to User Mamory and RCU</a>.
 <li>	<a href="#Energy Efficiency">Energy Efficiency</a>.
 <li>	<a href="#Scheduling-Clock Interrupts and RCU">
 	Scheduling-Clock Interrupts and RCU</a>.
@@ -2521,6 +2523,75 @@ cannot be used.
 The tracing folks both located the requirement and provided the
 needed fix, so this surprise requirement was relatively painless.
 
+<h3><a name="Accesses to User Mamory and RCU">
+Accesses to User Mamory and RCU</a></h3>
+
+<p>
+The kernel needs to access user-space memory, for example, to access
+data referenced by system-call parameters.
+The <tt>get_user()</tt> macro does this job.
+
+<p>
+However, user-space memory might well be paged out, which means
+that <tt>get_user()</tt> might well page-fault and thus block while
+waiting for the resulting I/O to complete.
+It would be a very bad thing for the compiler to reorder
+a <tt>get_user()</tt> invocation into an RCU read-side critical
+section.
+For example, suppose that the source code looked like this:
+
+<blockquote>
+<pre>
+ 1 rcu_read_lock();
+ 2 p = rcu_dereference(gp);
+ 3 v = p-&gt;value;
+ 4 rcu_read_unlock();
+ 5 get_user(user_v, user_p);
+ 6 do_something_with(v, user_v);
+</pre>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+The compiler must not be permitted to transform this source code into
+the following:
+
+<blockquote>
+<pre>
+ 1 rcu_read_lock();
+ 2 p = rcu_dereference(gp);
+ 3 get_user(user_v, user_p); // BUG: POSSIBLE PAGE FAULT!!!
+ 4 v = p-&gt;value;
+ 5 rcu_read_unlock();
+ 6 do_something_with(v, user_v);
+</pre>
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>
+If the compiler did make this transformation in a
+<tt>CONFIG_PREEMPT=n</tt> kernel build, and if <tt>get_user()</tt> did
+page fault, the result would be a quiescent state in the middle
+of an RCU read-side critical section.
+This misplaced quiescent state could result in line&nbsp;4 being
+a use-after-free access, which could be bad for your kernel's
+actuarial statistics.
+Similar examples can be constructed with the call to <tt>get_user()</tt>
+preceding the <tt>rcu_read_lock()</tt>.
+
+<p>
+Unfortunately, <tt>get_user()</tt> doesn't have any particular
+ordering properties, and in some architectures the underlying <tt>asm</tt>
+isn't even marked <tt>volatile</tt>.
+And even if it was marked <tt>volatile</tt>, the above access to
+<tt>p-&gt;value</tt> is not volatile, so the compiler would not have any
+reason to keep those two accesses in order.
+
+<p>
+Therefore, the Linux-kernel definitions of <tt>rcu_read_lock()</tt>
+and <tt>rcu_read_unlock()</tt> must act as compiler barriers,
+at least for outermost instances of <tt>rcu_read_lock()</tt> and
+<tt>rcu_read_unlock()</tt> within a nested set of RCU read-side critical
+sections.
+
 <h3><a name="Energy Efficiency">Energy Efficiency</a></h3>
 
 <p>