Re: [GIT PULL] Please pull proc and exec work for 5.7-rc1

Linus Torvalds
2020-04-09T17:36:29Z

On Thu, Apr 9, 2020 at 10:06 AM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
>
> a) We must stop in PTRACE_EVENT_EXIT during exec or userspace *breaks*.
>
> Those are the defined semantics and I believe it is something
> as common as strace that depends on them.

Don't be silly.

Of course we must stop IF THE TRACER IS ACTUALLY TRACING US.

But that's simply not the case. The deadlock case is where the tracer
is going through an execve, and the tracing thread is being killed.

Claiming that "user space breaks" is garbage. User space cannot care.
In fact, it's broken right now because it deadlocks, but it deadlocks
becvause that code waits for absolutely no good reason.

> b) Even if we added a test for our ptrace parent blocking in a ptrace
> attach of an ongoing exec, it still wouldn't help.
>
> That ptrace attach could legitimately come after the thread in
> question has stopped and notified it's parent it is stopped.

What?

The whole point is that the tracer _is_ the thing going through
execve(), which is why you get the deadlock in the first place.

You make no sense.

If the tracer is somebody else, we wouldn't be deadlocking. We'd just
be tracing.

I really don't understand your arguments against my patch. They seem
entirely nonsensical. Are we speaking past each other some way?

Linus