Re: [PATCH] x86/refcount: Implement fast refcount_t handling

Kees Cook
2017-04-24T20:33:36Z

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 4:00 AM, PaX Team <pageexec@freemail.hu> wrote:
> On 24 Apr 2017 at 10:32, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Apr 21, 2017 at 03:09:39PM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
>> > This patch ports the x86-specific atomic overflow handling from PaX's
>> > PAX_REFCOUNT to the upstream refcount_t API. This is an updated version
>> > from PaX that eliminates the saturation race condition by resetting the
>> > atomic counter back to the INT_MAX saturation value on both overflow and
>> > underflow. To win a race, a system would have to have INT_MAX threads
>> > simultaneously overflow before the saturation handler runs.
>
> note that the above is wrong (and even contradicting itself and the code).

True, this changelog could be more accurate (it resets to INT_MAX on
overflow and INT_MIN on underflow). I think I'm right in saying that a
system would need INT_MAX threads running a refcount_inc() (and a
refcount_dec_and_test() at exactly the right moment) before the reset
handler got scheduled, though, yes?

I'll attempt to clarify this.

-Kees

--
Kees Cook
Pixel Security