From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: From: Greg Kroah-Hartman To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, stable@vger.kernel.org Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman , alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk, Shan Hai , Benjamin Herrenschmidt Subject: [ 010/221] powerpc/vdso: Remove redundant locking in update_vsyscall_tz() Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:48:57 -0800 Message-Id: <20130115184958.800749237@linuxfoundation.org> In-Reply-To: <20130115184958.025580322@linuxfoundation.org> References: <20130115184958.025580322@linuxfoundation.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: 3.7-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know. ------------------ From: Shan Hai commit ce73ec6db47af84d1466402781ae0872a9e7873c upstream. The locking in update_vsyscall_tz() is not only unnecessary because the vdso code copies the data unproteced in __kernel_gettimeofday() but also introduces a hard to reproduce race condition between update_vsyscall() and update_vsyscall_tz(), which causes user space process to loop forever in vdso code. The following patch removes the locking from update_vsyscall_tz(). Locking is not only unnecessary because the vdso code copies the data unprotected in __kernel_gettimeofday() but also erroneous because updating the tb_update_count is not atomic and introduces a hard to reproduce race condition between update_vsyscall() and update_vsyscall_tz(), which further causes user space process to loop forever in vdso code. The below scenario describes the race condition, x==0 Boot CPU other CPU proc_P: x==0 timer interrupt update_vsyscall x==1 x++;sync settimeofday update_vsyscall_tz x==2 x++;sync x==3 sync;x++ sync;x++ proc_P: x==3 (loops until x becomes even) Because the ++ operator would be implemented as three instructions and not atomic on powerpc. A similar change was made for x86 in commit 6c260d58634 ("x86: vdso: Remove bogus locking in update_vsyscall_tz") Signed-off-by: Shan Hai Signed-off-by: Benjamin Herrenschmidt Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman --- arch/powerpc/kernel/time.c | 5 ----- 1 file changed, 5 deletions(-) --- a/arch/powerpc/kernel/time.c +++ b/arch/powerpc/kernel/time.c @@ -774,13 +774,8 @@ void update_vsyscall_old(struct timespec void update_vsyscall_tz(void) { - /* Make userspace gettimeofday spin until we're done. */ - ++vdso_data->tb_update_count; - smp_mb(); vdso_data->tz_minuteswest = sys_tz.tz_minuteswest; vdso_data->tz_dsttime = sys_tz.tz_dsttime; - smp_mb(); - ++vdso_data->tb_update_count; } static void __init clocksource_init(void)