Re: [PATCH] Fixing directly deferencing a __rcu pointer warning

[Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>]

$Subject should indicate a subsystem, also you seem to have a somewhat
random collection of Cc. It looks like dhowells is the cred guy and he's
not on.

On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 05:57:48PM +0530, Abhinav Singh wrote:
> This patch fixes the warning about directly dereferencing a pointer
> tagged with __rcu annotation.
> 
> Dereferencing the pointers tagged with __rcu directly should
> always be avoided according to the docs. There is a rcu helper
> functions rcu_dereference(...) to use when dereferencing a __rcu
> pointer. This functions returns the non __rcu tagged pointer which
> can be dereferenced just like a normal pointers.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Abhinav Singh <singhabhinav9051571833@gmail.com>
> ---
>  kernel/fork.c | 4 ++--
>  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/kernel/fork.c b/kernel/fork.c
> index 10917c3e1f03..802b7bbe3d92 100644
> --- a/kernel/fork.c
> +++ b/kernel/fork.c
> @@ -2369,7 +2369,7 @@ __latent_entropy struct task_struct *copy_process(
>  
>  	retval = -EAGAIN;
>  	if (is_rlimit_overlimit(task_ucounts(p), UCOUNT_RLIMIT_NPROC, rlimit(RLIMIT_NPROC))) {
> -		if (p->real_cred->user != INIT_USER &&
> +		if (rcu_dereference(p->real_cred)->user != INIT_USER &&
>  		    !capable(CAP_SYS_RESOURCE) && !capable(CAP_SYS_ADMIN))
>  			goto bad_fork_cleanup_count;
>  	}

This seems entirely misguided and only makes the code more confusing.

AFAICT at this point @p is not life, we're constructing the new task,
but it's not yet published, therefore no concurrency possible.
Additionally we're not actually in an RCU critical section afaict.

> @@ -2692,7 +2692,7 @@ __latent_entropy struct task_struct *copy_process(
>  			 */
>  			p->signal->has_child_subreaper = p->real_parent->signal->has_child_subreaper ||
>  							 p->real_parent->signal->is_child_subreaper;
> -			list_add_tail(&p->sibling, &p->real_parent->children);
> +			list_add_tail(&p->sibling, &(rcu_dereference(p->real_parent)->children));
>  			list_add_tail_rcu(&p->tasks, &init_task.tasks);
>  			attach_pid(p, PIDTYPE_TGID);
>  			attach_pid(p, PIDTYPE_PGID);

As to the real_parent, we hold the tasklist lock, which is the write
side lock for parent stuff, so rcu dereference is pointless here.