Re: [PATCH v8 00/27] mm/ksw: Introduce KStackWatch debugging tool

Jinchao Wang
2025-11-12T02:14:34Z

On Mon, Nov 10, 2025 at 05:33:22PM +0000, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2025 at 12:35:55AM +0800, Jinchao Wang wrote:
> > Earlier this year, I debugged a stack corruption panic that revealed the
> > limitations of existing debugging tools. The bug persisted for 739 days
> > before being fixed (CVE-2025-22036), and my reproduction scenario
> > differed from the CVE report—highlighting how unpredictably these bugs
> > manifest.
>
> Well, this demonstrates the dangers of keeping this problem siloed
> within your own exfat group. The fix made in 1bb7ff4204b6 is wrong!
> It was fixed properly in 7375f22495e7 which lists its Fixes: as
> Linux-2.6.12-rc2, but that's simply the beginning of git history.
> It's actually been there since v2.4.6.4 where it's documented as simply:
>
> - some subtle fs/buffer.c race conditions (Andrew Morton, me)
>
> As far as I can tell the changes made in 1bb7ff4204b6 should be
> reverted.

Thank you for the correction and the detailed history. I wasn't aware this
dated back to v2.4.6.4. I'm not part of the exfat group; I simply
encountered a bug that 1bb7ff4204b6 happened to resolve in my scenario.
The timeline actually illustrates the exact problem KStackWatch addresses:
a bug introduced in 2001, partially addressed in 2025, then properly fixed
months later. The 24-year gap suggests these silent stack corruptions are
extremely difficult to locate.

>
> > Initially, I enabled KASAN, but the bug did not reproduce. Reviewing the
> > code in __blk_flush_plug(), I found it difficult to trace all logic
> > paths due to indirect function calls through function pointers.
>
> So why is the solution here not simply to fix KASAN instead of this
> giant patch series?

KASAN caught 7375f22495e7 because put_bh() accessed bh->b_count after
wait_on_buffer() of another thread returned—the stack was invalid.
In 1bb7ff4204b6 and my case, corruption occurred before the victim
function of another thread returned. The stack remained valid to KASAN,
so no warning triggered. This is timing-dependent, not a KASAN deficiency.

Making KASAN treat parts of active stack frame as invalid would be
complex and add significant overhead, likely worsening the reproduction
prevention issue. KASAN's overhead already prevented reproduction in my
environment.

KStackWatch takes a different approach: it watches stack frame regardless
of whether KASAN considers them valid or invalid, with much less overhead
thereby preserving reproduction scenarios.

The value proposition:
Finding where corruption occurs is the bottleneck. Once located,
subsystem experts can analyze the root cause. Without that location, even
experts are stuck.

If KStackWatch had existed earlier, this 24-year-old bug might have been
found sooner when someone hit a similar corruption. The same applies to
other stack corruption bugs.

I'd appreciate your thoughts on whether this addresses your concerns.

Best regards,
Jinchao