Re: Kernel stack read with PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT and io_uring threads

Eric W. Biederman
2021-06-16T15:07:46Z

Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:

> On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 12:32 PM Eric W. Biederman
> <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
>>
>> I had to update ret_from_kernel_thread to pop that state to get Linus's
>> change to boot. Apparently kernel_threads exiting needs to be handled.
>
> You are very right.
>
> That, btw, seems to be a horrible design mistake, but I think it's how
> "kernel_execve()" works - both for the initial "init", but also for
> user-mode helper processes.
>
> Both of those cases do "kernel_thread()" to create a new thread, and
> then that new kernel thread does kernel_execve() to create the user
> space image for that thread. And that act of "execve()" clears
> PF_KTHREAD from the thread, and then the final return from the kernel
> thread function returns to that new user space.
>
> Or something like that. It's been ages since I looked at that code,
> and your patch initially confused the heck out of me because I went
> "that can't _possibly_ be needed".
>
> But yes, I think your patch is right.
>
> And I think our horrible "kernel threads return to user space when
> done" is absolutely horrifically nasty. Maybe of the clever sort, but
> mostly of the historical horror sort.
>
> Or am I mis-rememberting how this ends up working? Did you look at
> exactly what it was that returned from kernel threads?
>
> This might be worth commenting on somewhere. But your patch for alpha
> looks correct to me. Did you have some test-case to verify ptrace() on
> io worker threads?

At this point I just booted an alpha image and on qemu-system-alpha.

I do have gdb in my kernel image so I can test that. I haven't yet but
I can and should.

Sleeping on it I came up with a plan to add TF_SWITCH_STACK_SAVED to
indicate if the registers have been saved. The DO_SWITCH_STACK and
UNDO_SWITCH_STACK helpers (except in alpha_switch_to) can test that.
The ptrace helpers can test that and turn an access of random kernel
stack contents into something well behaved that does WARN_ON_ONCE
because we should not get there.

I suspect adding TF_SWITCH_STACK_SAVED should come first so it
is easy to verify the problem behavior, before I fix it.

My real goal is to find a pattern that architectures whose register
saves are structured like alphas can emulate, to minimize problems in
the future.

Plus I would really like to get the last handful of architectures
updated so we can remove CONFIG_HAVE_ARCH_TRACEHOOK. I think we can
do that on alpha because we save all of the system call arguments
in pt_regs and that is all the other non-ptrace code paths care about.

AKA I am trying to move the old architectures forward so we can get rid
of unnecessary complications in the core code.

Eric