From: Bernd Edlinger <bernd.edlinger@hotmail.de>
To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>,
Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
Alexey Gladkov <gladkov.alexey@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] Please pull proc and exec work for 5.7-rc1
Date: Fri, 3 Apr 2020 18:00:12 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <AM6PR03MB5170EA00F0BB243010B7BFE5E4C70@AM6PR03MB5170.eurprd03.prod.outlook.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAHk-=whM3r7zrm8mSi7HJhuZbYiXx9PFU5VQYeKm6Low=r15eQ@mail.gmail.com>
On 4/2/20 9:52 PM, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 2, 2020 at 12:31 PM Bernd Edlinger
> <bernd.edlinger@hotmail.de> wrote:
>>
>> This is at least what is my impression how the existing mutexes are used,
>> a mutex called "cred_guard_mutex" is a not very good self explaining name,
>> in my opinion, it is totally unclear what it does "guard", and why.
>
> Oh, I absolutely agree that cred_guard_mutex is a horrible lock.
>
> It actually _used_ to be a lot more understandable, and the name used
> to make more sense in the context it was used.
>
> See commit
>
> a2a8474c3fff ("exec: do not sleep in TASK_TRACED under ->cred_guard_mutex")
> > for when it changed from "somewhat understandable" to "really hard to follow".
>
Ah, yes, there it was introduced.
That fixed only the case of a single-threaded process doing execve,
but missed to fix the case of a multi-threaded process doing execve,
and the other threads racing with the execve. That is what happened
on my laptop, again and again, when I tried to fix a bug in the
gcc testsuite, that is while I wanted to track down another bug,
that is why the gcc testsuite left loads of temp-files in /tmp,
until I decided to go on a little bug-hunt in the linux kernel
instead :-/
And I had no idea what was happening at all. But that way this bug
bit me again and again, until I realized the nature of the strace
problem, when I was really baffled.
Before I considered a linux patch for that I tried to fix it in the
strace code instead, and in fact I had tried two approaches,
one is wait in a signal handler, that did not work.
The second one is use another thread that does the wait, and that
did only work when I disable the PTRACE_O_TRACEEXIT flags.
I posted the two patches on lkml, just for reference.
Maybe you are amused by those patches. I consider that a craziness myself,
but it was indeed able to avoid the deadlock, with a user space change alone:
https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/AM6PR03MB5170D68B5010FCA627A603F8E4E60@AM6PR03MB5170.eurprd03.prod.outlook.com/
so that is more or less for your amusement, sincerely I would not propose
that as the way to fix the strace deadlock.
Bernd.
> Don't get me wrong - that commit has a very good reason for it, but it
> does make the locking really hard to understand.
>
> It all used to be in one function - do_execve() - and it was holding
> the lock over a fairly obvious range, starting at
>
> bprm->cred = prepare_exec_creds();
>
> and ending at basically "we're done with execve()".
>
> So basically, cred_guard_mutex ends up being the thing that is held
> all the way from the "before execve looks at the old creds" to "execve
> is done, and has changed the creds".
>
> The reason it's needed is exactly that there are some nasty situations
> where execve() itself does things with creds to determine that the new
> creds are ok. And it uses the old creds to do that, but it also uses
> the task->flags and task->ptrace.
>
> So think of cred_guard_mutex as a lock around not just the creds, but
> the combination of creds and the task flags/ptrace.
>
> Anybody who changes the task ptrace setting needs to serialize with
> execve(). Or anybody who tests for "dumpable()", for example.
>
> If *all* you care about is just the creds, then you don't need it.
> It's really only users that do more checks than just credentials.
> "dumpable()" is I think the common one.
>
> And that's why cred_guard_mutex has that big range - it starts when we
> read the original creds (because it will use those creds to determine
> how the *new* creds will affect dumpability etc), and it ends when it
> has updated not only to the new creds, but it has set all those other
> flags too.
>
> So I'm not at all against splitting the lock up, and trying to make it
> more directed and specific.
>
> My complaints were about how the new lock wasn't much better. It was
> still completely incomprehensible, the conditional unlocking was hard
> to follow, and it really wasn't obvious that the converted users were
> fine.
>
> See?
>
> Linus
>
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-04-03 16:00 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 127+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <87blobnq02.fsf@x220.int.ebiederm.org>
2020-04-02 19:04 ` [GIT PULL] Please pull proc and exec work for 5.7-rc1 Linus Torvalds
2020-04-02 19:31 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-02 19:52 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-02 20:59 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-02 21:46 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-02 23:01 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-02 23:42 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-02 23:45 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-02 23:49 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-02 23:45 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-02 23:44 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-03 0:05 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-07 1:29 ` [RFC][PATCH 0/3] exec_update_mutex related cleanups Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-07 1:31 ` [PATCH 1/3] binfmt: Move install_exec_creds after setup_new_exec to match binfmt_elf Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-07 15:58 ` Kees Cook
2020-04-07 16:11 ` Christian Brauner
2020-04-08 17:25 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-08 19:51 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-07 1:31 ` [PATCH 2/3] exec: Make unlocking exec_update_mutex explict Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-07 16:02 ` Kees Cook
2020-04-07 16:17 ` Christian Brauner
2020-04-07 16:21 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-07 1:32 ` [PATCH 3/3] exec: Rename the flag called_exec_mmap point_of_no_return Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-07 16:03 ` Kees Cook
2020-04-07 16:21 ` Christian Brauner
2020-04-07 16:22 ` [RFC][PATCH 0/3] exec_update_mutex related cleanups Christian Brauner
2020-04-08 17:26 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-03 5:09 ` [GIT PULL] Please pull proc and exec work for 5.7-rc1 Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-03 19:26 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-03 20:41 ` Waiman Long
2020-04-03 20:59 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-03 23:16 ` Waiman Long
2020-04-03 23:23 ` Waiman Long
2020-04-04 1:30 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-04 2:02 ` Waiman Long
2020-04-04 2:28 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-04 6:34 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-05 6:34 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-05 19:35 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-05 2:42 ` Waiman Long
2020-04-05 3:35 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-05 3:45 ` Waiman Long
2020-04-06 13:13 ` Will Deacon
2020-04-04 4:23 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-06 22:17 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-07 19:50 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-07 20:29 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-07 20:47 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-08 15:14 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-08 15:21 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-08 16:34 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 14:58 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-09 15:15 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-09 16:15 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 16:24 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 17:03 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-09 17:17 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-09 17:37 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 17:46 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-09 18:36 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 19:42 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 19:57 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-09 20:04 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 20:36 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-09 21:00 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-09 21:17 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 23:52 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-10 0:30 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-10 0:32 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-11 4:07 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-11 18:20 ` Oleg Nesterov
2020-04-11 18:29 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-11 18:31 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-11 19:15 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-11 20:07 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-11 21:16 ` Bernd Edlinger
[not found] ` <CAHk-=wgWHkBzFazWJj57emHPd3Dg9SZHaZqoO7-AD+UbBTJgig@mail.gmail.com>
2020-04-11 21:57 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-12 6:01 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-12 19:50 ` Oleg Nesterov
2020-04-12 20:14 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-28 2:56 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-28 17:07 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-28 19:08 ` Oleg Nesterov
2020-04-28 20:35 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-28 21:06 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-28 21:36 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-28 21:53 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-28 22:14 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-28 23:36 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-29 17:58 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-29 18:33 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-29 18:57 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-29 19:23 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-29 19:26 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-29 20:19 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-29 21:06 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-29 22:38 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-29 23:22 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-29 23:59 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-30 1:08 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-30 2:20 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-30 3:00 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-30 3:25 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-30 3:41 ` Jann Horn
2020-04-30 3:50 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-30 13:37 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-30 2:16 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-30 13:39 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-30 13:47 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-30 14:29 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-30 16:40 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-05-02 4:11 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-09 17:36 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09 20:34 ` Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-09 20:56 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-02 23:02 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-02 23:22 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-03 7:38 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-03 16:00 ` Bernd Edlinger [this message]
2020-04-03 15:09 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-03 16:23 ` Linus Torvalds
2020-04-03 16:36 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-04 5:43 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-04 5:48 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-06 6:41 ` Bernd Edlinger
2020-04-10 13:03 ` [GIT PULL] proc fix " Eric W. Biederman
2020-04-10 20:40 ` pr-tracker-bot
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