[PATCH 3.10 274/319] kernel/fork: fix CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID regression in nscd

Willy Tarreau
2017-02-05T19:34:18Z

From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>

commit 735f2770a770156100f534646158cb58cb8b2939 upstream.

Commit fec1d0115240 ("[PATCH] Disable CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID for abnormal
exit") has caused a subtle regression in nscd which uses
CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID to clear the nscd_certainly_running flag in the
shared databases, so that the clients are notified when nscd is
restarted. Now, when nscd uses a non-persistent database, clients that
have it mapped keep thinking the database is being updated by nscd, when
in fact nscd has created a new (anonymous) one (for non-persistent
databases it uses an unlinked file as backend).

The original proposal for the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID change claimed
(https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/25/233):

: The NPTL library uses the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID flag on clone() syscalls
: on behalf of pthread_create() library calls. This feature is used to
: request that the kernel clear the thread-id in user space (at an address
: provided in the syscall) when the thread disassociates itself from the
: address space, which is done in mm_release().
:
: Unfortunately, when a multi-threaded process incurs a core dump (such as
: from a SIGSEGV), the core-dumping thread sends SIGKILL signals to all of
: the other threads, which then proceed to clear their user-space tids
: before synchronizing in exit_mm() with the start of core dumping. This
: misrepresents the state of process's address space at the time of the
: SIGSEGV and makes it more difficult for someone to debug NPTL and glibc
: problems (misleading him/her to conclude that the threads had gone away
: before the fault).
:
: The fix below is to simply avoid the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID action if a
: core dump has been initiated.

The resulting patch from Roland (https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/26/269)
seems to have a larger scope than the original patch asked for. It
seems that limitting the scope of the check to core dumping should work
for SIGSEGV issue describe above.

[Changelog partly based on Andreas' description]
Fixes: fec1d0115240 ("[PATCH] Disable CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID for abnormal exit")
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1471968749-26173-1-git-send-email-mhocko@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Tested-by: William Preston <wpreston@suse.com>
Acked-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Roland McGrath <roland@hack.frob.com>
Cc: Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
---
kernel/fork.c | 10 ++++------
1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
index 2358bd4..612e78d 100644
--- a/kernel/fork.c
+++ b/kernel/fork.c
@@ -775,14 +775,12 @@ void mm_release(struct task_struct *tsk, struct mm_struct *mm)
deactivate_mm(tsk, mm);

/*
- * If we're exiting normally, clear a user-space tid field if
- * requested. We leave this alone when dying by signal, to leave
- * the value intact in a core dump, and to save the unnecessary
- * trouble, say, a killed vfork parent shouldn't touch this mm.
- * Userland only wants this done for a sys_exit.
+ * Signal userspace if we're not exiting with a core dump
+ * because we want to leave the value intact for debugging
+ * purposes.
*/
if (tsk->clear_child_tid) {
- if (!(tsk->flags & PF_SIGNALED) &&
+ if (!(tsk->signal->flags & SIGNAL_GROUP_COREDUMP) &&
atomic_read(&mm->mm_users) > 1) {
/*
* We don't check the error code - if userspace has
--
2.8.0.rc2.1.gbe9624a