Re: [PATCH net 000/117] net: avoid to remove module when its debugfs is being used

[Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>]

On Fri, 2020-10-09 at 07:09 +0200, Nicolai Stange wrote:
> Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> writes:
> 
> > On Thu, 2020-10-08 at 15:59 +0000, David Laight wrote:
> > > From: Taehee Yoo
> > > > Sent: 08 October 2020 16:49
> > > > 
> > > > When debugfs file is opened, its module should not be removed until
> > > > it's closed.
> > > > Because debugfs internally uses the module's data.
> > > > So, it could access freed memory.
> > > > 
> > > > In order to avoid panic, it just sets .owner to THIS_MODULE.
> > > > So that all modules will be held when its debugfs file is opened.
> > > 
> > > Can't you fix it in common code?
> 
> Probably not: it's the call to ->release() that's faulting in the Oops
> quoted in the cover letter and that one can't be protected by the
> core debugfs code, unfortunately.
> 
> There's a comment in full_proxy_release(), which reads as
> 
> 	/*
> 	 * We must not protect this against removal races here: the
> 	 * original releaser should be called unconditionally in order
> 	 * not to leak any resources. Releasers must not assume that
> 	 * ->i_private is still being meaningful here.
> 	 */

Yeah, found that too now :-)

> > Yeah I was just wondering that too - weren't the proxy_fops even already
> > intended to fix this?
> 
> No, as far as file_operations are concerned, the proxy fops's intent was
> only to ensure that the memory the file_operations' ->owner resides in
> is still valid so that try_module_get() won't splat at file open
> (c.f. [1]).

Right.

> You're right that the default "full" proxy fops do prevent all
> file_operations but ->release() from getting invoked on removed files,
> but the motivation had not been to protect the file_operations
> themselves, but accesses to any stale data associated with removed files
> ([2]).

:)

I actually got this to work in a crazy way, I'll send something out but
I'm sure it's a better idea to add the .owner everywhere, but please
let's do it in fewer than hundreds of patches :-)

johannes