Re: [RFC PATCH 8/9] livepatch: allow patch modules to be removed

Miroslav Benes
2015-02-16T16:06:22Z

On Fri, 13 Feb 2015, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 05:17:10PM +0100, Miroslav Benes wrote:
> > On Fri, 13 Feb 2015, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> > > Hm, even with Jiri Slaby's suggested fix to add the completion to the
> > > unregister path, I still get a lockdep warning. This looks more insidious,
> > > related to the locking order of a kernfs lock and the klp lock. I'll need to
> > > look at this some more...
> >
> > Yes, I was afraid of this. Lockdep warning is a separate bug. It is caused
> > by taking klp_mutex in enabled_store. During rmmod klp_unregister_patch
> > takes klp_mutex and destroys the sysfs structure. If somebody writes to
> > enabled just after unregister takes the mutex and before the sysfs
> > removal, he would cause the deadlock, because enabled_store takes the
> > "sysfs lock" and then klp_mutex. That is exactly what the lockdep tells us
> > below.
> >
> > We can look for inspiration elsewhere. Grep for s_active through git log
> > of the mainline offers several commits which dealt exactly with this. Will
> > browse through that...
>
> Thanks Miroslav, please let me know what you find. It wouldn't surprise
> me if this were a very common problem.
>
> One option would be to move the enabled_store() work out to a workqueue
> or something.

Yes, that is one possibility. It is not the only one.

1. we could replace mutex_lock in enabled_store with mutex_trylock. If the
lock was not acquired we would return -EBUSY. Or could we 'return
restart_syscall' (maybe after some tiny msleep)?

2. we could reorganize klp_unregister_patch somehow and move sysfs removal
out of mutex protection.

Miroslav

> > >
> > > To recreate:
> > >
> > > insmod livepatch-sample.ko
> > >
> > > # wait for patching to complete
> > >
> > > ~/a.out & <-- simple program which opens the "enabled" file in the background
> >
> > I didn't even need such a program. Lockdep warned me with sole insmod,
> > echo and rmmod. It is magically clever.
>
> Ah, even easier... lockdep is awesome.
>
> --
> Josh
>

--
Miroslav Benes
SUSE Labs