From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <4B90E628.1090005@domain.hid> Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2010 12:08:24 +0100 From: Wolfgang Mauerer MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <4B8E24B4.9000806@domain.hid> <4B8E260D.7070809@domain.hid> <4B8E281F.1040308@domain.hid> <4B8E28D2.6020808@domain.hid> <4B8FFBCD.9020305@domain.hid> <4B8FFDC0.4080903@domain.hid> <4B90173C.9080008@domain.hid> In-Reply-To: <4B90173C.9080008@domain.hid> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [Xenomai-core] Potential heap corruption on thread cleanup List-Id: Xenomai life and development List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , To: Jan Kiszka Cc: xenomai-core , "Hillier, Gernot" Jan Kiszka wrote: > Gilles Chanteperdrix wrote: >> Jan Kiszka wrote: >>> Gilles Chanteperdrix wrote: >>>> Jan Kiszka wrote: >>>>> Gilles Chanteperdrix wrote: >>>>>> Jan Kiszka wrote: >>>>>>> Hi Gilles, >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I'm pushing your findings to the list, also as my colleagues showed >>>>>>> strong interest - this thing may explain rare corruptions for us as well. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> I thought a bit about that likely u_mode-related crash in your test case >>>>>>> and have the following theory so far: If the xeno_current_mode storage >>>>>>> is allocated on the application heap (!HAVE_THREAD, that's also what we >>>>>>> are forced to use), it is automatically freed on thread termination in >>>>>>> the context of the dying thread. If the thread is already migrated to >>>>>>> secondary or if that happens while it is cleaned up (i.e. before calling >>>>>>> for exit into the kernel), there is no problem, Xenomai will not touch >>>>>>> the mode storage anymore. But if the thread happens to delete the >>>>>>> storage "silently", without any migration, the final exit will trigger >>>>>>> one further access. And that takes place against an invalid head area at >>>>>>> this point. >>>>>>> >>>>>>> Does this make sense? >>>>>> Yes, it is the issue we observed. >>>>>> >>>>>>> If that is true, all we need to do is to force a migration before >>>>>>> releasing the mode storage. Could you check this? >>>>>> No, that does not fly. Calling, for instance, __wrap_pthread_mutex_lock >>>>>> in another TSD cleanup function is which could be called after the >>>>>> current_mode TSD cleanup is allowed and could trigger a switch to >>>>>> primary mode and a write to the u_mode. >>>>>> >>>>> Good point. Mmh. Another, but ABI-breaking, way would be to add a >>>>> syscall for deregistering the u_mode pointer... >>>> That is the thing we did to verify that we had this bug. But this >>>> syscall would be also called too soon, and suffers from the TSD cleanup >>>> functions order again. >>>> >>> Right, the only complete fix without losing functionality is to add an >>> option to our ABI for requesting kernel-managed memory if dynamic >>> allocation is necessary (i.e. no TLS is available). >> No. TLS may as well suffer from the same issue, since it is handled by >> the glibc or libgcc, over which we have no control. So yes, it may work >> by chance today, but may as well stop working tomorrow. We use >> kernel-managed memory all the time, final point. > > I think we are still in the solution finding process, no need for early > conclusions. > > See, we actually do not need kernel-managed storage for u_mode at all. > u_mode is an optimization, mostly for our fast user space mutexes. We > can indeed switch off all updates by the kernel and will still be able > to provide all required features - just less optimally. Adding a third > state, "invalid", we can make all mutex users assume they need the slow > syscall path on uncontended acquisition. And assert_nrt will probably be > happy about a syscall replacement for u_mode when it became invalid. Thinking about the "fast" part in "fast userspace mutex": Would it be an argument in favour of not using the global semaphore heap that said memory is uncached on some architectures? Or is that irrelevant? Regards, Wolfgang