[kernel-hardening] Re: Conversion from atomic_t to refcount_t: summary of issues

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Tue, Dec 20, 2016 at 09:13:58AM +0000, Reshetova, Elena wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 19, 2016 at 07:55:15AM +0000, Reshetova, Elena wrote:
> > > Well, again, you are right in theory, but in practice for example for struct
> > sched_group { atomic_t ref; ... }:
> > >
> > > http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/kernel/sched/core.c#L6178
> > >
> > > To me this is a refcounter that needs the protection.
> > 
> > Only if you have more than UINT_MAX CPUs or something like that.
> > 
> > And if you really really want to use refcount_t there, you could +1 the
> > scheme and it'd work again.
> 
> Well, yes, probably, but there are many cases like this in practice,
> so we would need to have a good plan how to get it all submitted and
> tested properly. The current patch set is already bigger than what we
> had before and it is only growing. 

kernel programming is hard :)

Don't get frustrated, it's going to be a lot of work, just break it up
into chunks and go at it...

> Hans will provide more info later today based on his testing, which
> shows many places in kernel core where we DO actually have increment
> on zero happening in practice and whole kernel doesn't even boot with
> the strictest approach (refusing to inc on zero). And we are only able
> to test for x86.... 
> 
> Given the massive amount of changes, it would be good to merge this at
> least in couple of stages: 
> 
> 1) first soft version of refcount_t API which at least allows
> increment on zero and all atomic_t used as refcounter occurrences that
> don't require reference counter scheme change (+1 or other)

Why not merge the "correct" implementation?  Don't submit something that
doesn't work well.  Then fix up the instances that are broken when you
convert them to this new api.

> 2) patch set that fixes all problematic places (potentially with code rewrite) 
> 3) patch that removes possibility of inc on zero from refcount_t

That implies that 3) would not happen for another year or so, not good.
Do it right the first time.

thanks,

greg k-h