Re: [PATCH net-next 00/14] net: annotate data-races around sysctl knobs

[Jiayuan Chen <jiayuan.chen@linux.dev>]

On 11/9/26 11:11 AM, Jason Xing wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2026 at 10:55 AM Jiayuan Chen <jiayuan.chen@linux.dev> wrote:
>> While testing the recent sysctl range fixes I noticed that a lot of our
>> sysctl knobs are read with plain loads while the handlers update them
>> with WRITE_ONCE() and no lock, so KCSAN reports them as data races. I
>> then used an LLM to go through every ctl_table under net/ and list the
>> readers that were left behind. This series annotates them with
>> READ_ONCE(), and adds WRITE_ONCE() to a few custom handlers and netlink
>> paths that store to the same fields with plain writes. Most of it is a
>> plain READ_ONCE() at each read; where a function reads the same knob
>> twice to make one decision, it now reads it once into a local, so the
>> comparison and the value it acts on cannot come from two different
>> writes.
>>
>> There are no Fixes tags. Done one knob per patch this would be well over
>> a hundred commits, so I grouped them by subsystem and feature instead to
>> keep the review manageable. If maintainers prefer, I can split it up
>> further with a Fixes tag on each one, as several smaller series.
> Over the last year, I've been thinking about the annotation stuff
> especially around sysctls, which, I suppose, shouldn't actually affect
> the real workload but does affect the outcome of the syzbot.
>
> Out of sheer curiosity, my question would be what is the point of
> trying to change all of them? Or what kind of benefits can we get from
> the big series?


Three things:

1. A plain load may be emitted twice by the compiler. ip_error() compares
peer->rate_tokens against ip_rt_error_cost and then subtracts it again;
if the sysctl changes in between, the u32 wraps. A few readers have that
shape and now read the knob once into a local.

2. Tearing is not involved here, all the fields are at most word sized.

3. The rest is the memory model: a lockless read of a field written with
WRITE_ONCE() is a data race unless it is marked
(tools/memory-model/Documentation/access-marking.txt). That is what KCSAN
reports, and why most of the series is plain READ_ONCE().


I think the benefit is doing it in one pass.