Re: [PATCH] net_device refcnt bug when NFQUEUEing bridged packets

[Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@linux-foundation.org>]

On Wed, 16 Jan 2008 00:05:44 +0100
Jan Christoph Nordholz <hesso@pool.math.tu-berlin.de> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I came across the following bug a few weeks ago (which still applies to
> 2.6.24-rc7):
> 
> Packets that are to be sent out over a bridge device are skb_clone()d in
> br_loop() before traversing the appropriate (FORWARD/OUTPUT) NF chain. 
> The copies made by skb_clone() share their nf_bridge metadata with the
> original, which is no problem usually.
> If however one or more packets of a br_loop() run end up in a NFQUEUE,
> their shared nf_bridge metadata causes trouble when they are about to be
> reinjected: nf_reinject() decrements the net_device refcounts that were
> previously upped when queueing the packet in __nf_queue(), but as
> skb->nf_bridge->physoutdev points to the same device for all these
> packets, most (if not all) of them will affect the wrong refcnt.
> 
> (I originally encountered the bug on a Xen host because the hypervisor
> refused to shutdown a virtual device with non-zero refcount... but it is
> perfectly reproducible with a standard kernel, too, although it was a
> bit more tedious to create a test scenario, involving a couple of UMLs.)
> 
> I'd suggest to make a real copy of the nf_bridge member in br_loop() if
> CONFIG_BRIDGE_NETFILTER is defined - I've attached a patch that illus-
> trates how to fix the bug (and the machine I've found the bug on is
> running a kernel with this patch since weeks and has not had any
> refcount anomalies since), but I admit it is ugly, returning the reference
> acquired by __nf_copy() and then copying manually...
> 
> Please tell me where that logic should really go (skbuff.h? br_netfilter.c?)
> so I can wrap up a final and CodingStyle-conformant version, or feel free
> to simply apply a modified version.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Jan
> 
>

Please submit a bug to kernel bugzilla.  Not sure that the patch is the
proper way to fix this.

-- 
Stephen Hemminger <stephen.hemminger@vyatta.com>