2009-10-28 22:32:13

by Rusty Russell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: [PULL] param sysfs oops (simple, leaky) fix, bool arrays fix

(Thanks to Takashi-san, who found the oops and kept reading the code to spot
the others. A more complete fix is pending, but this works for 2.6.32 and
-stable: see commit message and FIXME in code.)

The following changes since commit 964fe080d94db82a3268443e9b9ece4c60246414:
Linus Torvalds (1):
Merge git://git.kernel.org/.../rusty/linux-2.6-for-linus

are available in the git repository at:

ssh://master.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rusty/linux-2.6-param-fixes.git master

Rusty Russell (3):
param: fix lots of bugs with writing charp params from sysfs, by leaking mem.
param: fix NULL comparison on oom
param: fix setting arrays of bool

include/linux/moduleparam.h | 1 -
kernel/params.c | 17 ++++++-----------
2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)

commit 65afac7d80ab3bc9f81e75eafb71eeb92a3ebdef
Author: Rusty Russell <[email protected]>
Date: Thu Oct 29 08:56:16 2009 -0600

param: fix lots of bugs with writing charp params from sysfs, by leaking mem.

e180a6b7759a "param: fix charp parameters set via sysfs" fixed the case
where charp parameters written via sysfs were freed, leaving drivers
accessing random memory.

Unfortunately, storing a flag in the kparam struct was a bad idea: it's
rodata so setting it causes an oops on some archs. But that's not all:

1) module_param_array() on charp doesn't work reliably, since we use an
uninitialized temporary struct kernel_param.
2) there's a fundamental race if a module uses this parameter and then
it's changed: they will still access the old, freed, memory.

The simplest fix (ie. for 2.6.32) is to never free the memory. This
prevents all these problems, at cost of a memory leak. In practice, there
are only 18 places where a charp is writable via sysfs, and all are
root-only writable.

Reported-by: Takashi Iwai <[email protected]>
Cc: Sitsofe Wheeler <[email protected]>
Cc: Frederic Weisbecker <[email protected]>
Cc: Christof Schmitt <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]

include/linux/moduleparam.h | 1 -
kernel/params.c | 10 +---------
2 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)

commit d553ad864e3b3dde3f1038d491e207021b2d6293
Author: Rusty Russell <[email protected]>
Date: Thu Oct 29 08:56:17 2009 -0600

param: fix NULL comparison on oom

kp->arg is always true: it's the contents of that pointer we care about.

Reported-by: Takashi Iwai <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]

kernel/params.c | 2 +-
1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

commit 3c7d76e371ac1a3802ae1673f5c63554af59325c
Author: Rusty Russell <[email protected]>
Date: Thu Oct 29 08:56:19 2009 -0600

param: fix setting arrays of bool

We create a dummy struct kernel_param on the stack for parsing each
array element, but we didn't initialize the flags word. This matters
for arrays of type "bool", where the flag indicates if it really is
an array of bools or unsigned int (old-style).

Reported-by: Takashi Iwai <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Rusty Russell <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]

kernel/params.c | 5 ++++-
1 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/moduleparam.h b/include/linux/moduleparam.h
index 6547c3c..82a9124 100644
--- a/include/linux/moduleparam.h
+++ b/include/linux/moduleparam.h
@@ -37,7 +37,6 @@ typedef int (*param_set_fn)(const char *val, struct kernel_param *kp);
typedef int (*param_get_fn)(char *buffer, struct kernel_param *kp);

/* Flag bits for kernel_param.flags */
-#define KPARAM_KMALLOCED 1
#define KPARAM_ISBOOL 2

struct kernel_param {
diff --git a/kernel/params.c b/kernel/params.c
index 9da58ea..d656c27 100644
--- a/kernel/params.c
+++ b/kernel/params.c
@@ -218,15 +218,11 @@ int param_set_charp(const char *val, struct kernel_param *kp)
return -ENOSPC;
}

- if (kp->flags & KPARAM_KMALLOCED)
- kfree(*(char **)kp->arg);
-
/* This is a hack. We can't need to strdup in early boot, and we
* don't need to; this mangled commandline is preserved. */
if (slab_is_available()) {
- kp->flags |= KPARAM_KMALLOCED;
*(char **)kp->arg = kstrdup(val, GFP_KERNEL);
- if (!kp->arg)
+ if (!*(char **)kp->arg)
return -ENOMEM;
} else
*(const char **)kp->arg = val;
@@ -304,6 +300,7 @@ static int param_array(const char *name,
unsigned int min, unsigned int max,
void *elem, int elemsize,
int (*set)(const char *, struct kernel_param *kp),
+ u16 flags,
unsigned int *num)
{
int ret;
@@ -313,6 +310,7 @@ static int param_array(const char *name,
/* Get the name right for errors. */
kp.name = name;
kp.arg = elem;
+ kp.flags = flags;

/* No equals sign? */
if (!val) {
@@ -358,7 +356,8 @@ int param_array_set(const char *val, struct kernel_param *kp)
unsigned int temp_num;

return param_array(kp->name, val, 1, arr->max, arr->elem,
- arr->elemsize, arr->set, arr->num ?: &temp_num);
+ arr->elemsize, arr->set, kp->flags,
+ arr->num ?: &temp_num);
}

int param_array_get(char *buffer, struct kernel_param *kp)
@@ -605,11 +604,7 @@ void module_param_sysfs_remove(struct module *mod)

void destroy_params(const struct kernel_param *params, unsigned num)
{
- unsigned int i;
-
- for (i = 0; i < num; i++)
- if (params[i].flags & KPARAM_KMALLOCED)
- kfree(*(char **)params[i].arg);
+ /* FIXME: This should free kmalloced charp parameters. It doesn't. */
}

static void __init kernel_add_sysfs_param(const char *name,


2010-04-27 10:36:24

by Artem Bityutskiy

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [PULL] param sysfs oops (simple, leaky) fix, bool arrays fix

On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 09:02 +1030, Rusty Russell wrote:
> (Thanks to Takashi-san, who found the oops and kept reading the code to spot
> the others. A more complete fix is pending, but this works for 2.6.32 and
> -stable: see commit message and FIXME in code.)
>
> The following changes since commit 964fe080d94db82a3268443e9b9ece4c60246414:
> Linus Torvalds (1):
> Merge git://git.kernel.org/.../rusty/linux-2.6-for-linus
>
> are available in the git repository at:
>
> ssh://master.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rusty/linux-2.6-param-fixes.git master
>
> Rusty Russell (3):
> param: fix lots of bugs with writing charp params from sysfs, by leaking mem.
> param: fix NULL comparison on oom
> param: fix setting arrays of bool
>
> include/linux/moduleparam.h | 1 -
> kernel/params.c | 17 ++++++-----------
> 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
>
> commit 65afac7d80ab3bc9f81e75eafb71eeb92a3ebdef
> Author: Rusty Russell <[email protected]>
> Date: Thu Oct 29 08:56:16 2009 -0600
>
> param: fix lots of bugs with writing charp params from sysfs, by leaking mem.
>
> e180a6b7759a "param: fix charp parameters set via sysfs" fixed the case
> where charp parameters written via sysfs were freed, leaving drivers
> accessing random memory.
>
> Unfortunately, storing a flag in the kparam struct was a bad idea: it's
> rodata so setting it causes an oops on some archs. But that's not all:
>
> 1) module_param_array() on charp doesn't work reliably, since we use an
> uninitialized temporary struct kernel_param.
> 2) there's a fundamental race if a module uses this parameter and then
> it's changed: they will still access the old, freed, memory.
>
> The simplest fix (ie. for 2.6.32) is to never free the memory. This
> prevents all these problems, at cost of a memory leak. In practice, there
> are only 18 places where a charp is writable via sysfs, and all are
> root-only writable.

Hmm, is it really only about changing the parameters via sysfs? We see
the following kmemleak complaints in 2.6.32 (I think it will be the same
in the latest kernel, but I did not check):

kmemleak: unreferenced object 0xdeff3c80 (size 64):
kmemleak: comm "modprobe", pid 788, jiffies 4294933427
kmemleak: backtrace:
kmemleak: [<c00e59b8>] __save_stack_trace+0x34/0x40
kmemleak: [<c00e5ad0>] create_object+0x10c/0x208
kmemleak: [<c03ae0ec>] kmemleak_alloc+0x40/0x84
kmemleak: [<c00dca74>] __kmalloc_track_caller+0x140/0x154
kmemleak: [<c00c47ac>] kstrdup+0x38/0x54
kmemleak: [<c0081854>] param_set_charp+0x68/0x94
kmemleak: [<c0081108>] parse_args+0x18c/0x280
kmemleak: [<c009fc74>] load_module+0x11e8/0x1644
kmemleak: [<c00a0130>] sys_init_module+0x60/0x1f4
kmemleak: [<c003c040>] ret_fast_syscall+0x0/0x38

So we are leaking on every insmod/rmmod, AFAICS, not just in the sysfs
case.

--
Best Regards,
Artem Bityutskiy (Артём Битюцкий)

2010-04-27 10:58:12

by Artem Bityutskiy

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [PULL] param sysfs oops (simple, leaky) fix, bool arrays fix

On Tue, 2010-04-27 at 13:31 +0300, Artem Bityutskiy wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-10-29 at 09:02 +1030, Rusty Russell wrote:
> > (Thanks to Takashi-san, who found the oops and kept reading the code to spot
> > the others. A more complete fix is pending, but this works for 2.6.32 and
> > -stable: see commit message and FIXME in code.)
> >
> > The following changes since commit 964fe080d94db82a3268443e9b9ece4c60246414:
> > Linus Torvalds (1):
> > Merge git://git.kernel.org/.../rusty/linux-2.6-for-linus
> >
> > are available in the git repository at:
> >
> > ssh://master.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rusty/linux-2.6-param-fixes.git master
> >
> > Rusty Russell (3):
> > param: fix lots of bugs with writing charp params from sysfs, by leaking mem.
> > param: fix NULL comparison on oom
> > param: fix setting arrays of bool
> >
> > include/linux/moduleparam.h | 1 -
> > kernel/params.c | 17 ++++++-----------
> > 2 files changed, 6 insertions(+), 12 deletions(-)
> >
> > commit 65afac7d80ab3bc9f81e75eafb71eeb92a3ebdef
> > Author: Rusty Russell <[email protected]>
> > Date: Thu Oct 29 08:56:16 2009 -0600
> >
> > param: fix lots of bugs with writing charp params from sysfs, by leaking mem.
> >
> > e180a6b7759a "param: fix charp parameters set via sysfs" fixed the case
> > where charp parameters written via sysfs were freed, leaving drivers
> > accessing random memory.
> >
> > Unfortunately, storing a flag in the kparam struct was a bad idea: it's
> > rodata so setting it causes an oops on some archs. But that's not all:
> >
> > 1) module_param_array() on charp doesn't work reliably, since we use an
> > uninitialized temporary struct kernel_param.
> > 2) there's a fundamental race if a module uses this parameter and then
> > it's changed: they will still access the old, freed, memory.
> >
> > The simplest fix (ie. for 2.6.32) is to never free the memory. This
> > prevents all these problems, at cost of a memory leak. In practice, there
> > are only 18 places where a charp is writable via sysfs, and all are
> > root-only writable.
>
> Hmm, is it really only about changing the parameters via sysfs? We see
> the following kmemleak complaints in 2.6.32 (I think it will be the same
> in the latest kernel, but I did not check):
>
> kmemleak: unreferenced object 0xdeff3c80 (size 64):
> kmemleak: comm "modprobe", pid 788, jiffies 4294933427
> kmemleak: backtrace:
> kmemleak: [<c00e59b8>] __save_stack_trace+0x34/0x40
> kmemleak: [<c00e5ad0>] create_object+0x10c/0x208
> kmemleak: [<c03ae0ec>] kmemleak_alloc+0x40/0x84
> kmemleak: [<c00dca74>] __kmalloc_track_caller+0x140/0x154
> kmemleak: [<c00c47ac>] kstrdup+0x38/0x54
> kmemleak: [<c0081854>] param_set_charp+0x68/0x94
> kmemleak: [<c0081108>] parse_args+0x18c/0x280
> kmemleak: [<c009fc74>] load_module+0x11e8/0x1644
> kmemleak: [<c00a0130>] sys_init_module+0x60/0x1f4
> kmemleak: [<c003c040>] ret_fast_syscall+0x0/0x38
>
> So we are leaking on every insmod/rmmod, AFAICS, not just in the sysfs
> case.

Rusty, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like the above memleak was
introduced by e180a6b7759a99a28cbcce3547c4c80822cb6c2a, where you added
the kstrdup(). So you kinda fixed the sysfs case (it still memleaks
though), but at the cost of additional insmod/rmmod leak, right?

--
Best Regards,
Artem Bityutskiy (Артём Битюцкий)

2010-06-22 16:46:15

by Phil Carmody

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [PULL] param sysfs oops (simple, leaky) fix, bool arrays fix

On 06/05/10 04:28 +0200, ext Rusty Russell wrote:
> On Wed, 5 May 2010 06:19:29 pm Artem Bityutskiy wrote:
> > > Fixing in the way of the later upstream is a bit too intrusive as a
> > > stable patch. So, I'm also not sure whether we should take it,
> > > too...
> >
> > To be frank I do not really understand what you mean.
> >
> > Anyway, I just humbly suggest not to have the "no one uses that, let's
> > have a leak" attitude. I do understand that this is a 'it's a lot of
> > churn for not much gain'. However, I think the rmmod leak is large
> > enough issue.
>
> Thanks Artem, that's exactly the kind of feedback we need.
>
> For most people, module parameters are rare, and module removal is rare.
> So the amount of leak is less than the size of the code we would add to fix
> it.
>
> If this is hitting you, it clearly changes the priorities. I will include
> the patches now.

Rusty,

Artem's passed the baton over to me to investigate, so I've reviewed
and back-ported the last known version of your patchset. I'm happy to
report that the 100% reproducable leak that we were seeing before
cannot be reproduced. As expected, given review of the code. I have
not been able to test the final driver-specific patches from your
patchset, but up to and including

[PATCH 12/18] param: simple locking for sysfs-writable charp parameters

they can all have a:

Tested-by: Phil Carmody <[email protected]>

I'm quite interested to see these pushed into the mainline so that I
can cherry-pick final versions for our internal tree, do you have any
schedule for that?

Cheers,
Phil

2010-06-22 23:24:12

by Rusty Russell

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: [PULL] param sysfs oops (simple, leaky) fix, bool arrays fix

On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 02:20:11 am Phil Carmody wrote:
> Artem's passed the baton over to me to investigate, so I've reviewed
> and back-ported the last known version of your patchset. I'm happy to
> report that the 100% reproducable leak that we were seeing before
> cannot be reproduced. As expected, given review of the code. I have
> not been able to test the final driver-specific patches from your
> patchset, but up to and including
>
> [PATCH 12/18] param: simple locking for sysfs-writable charp parameters
>
> they can all have a:
>
> Tested-by: Phil Carmody <[email protected]>
>
> I'm quite interested to see these pushed into the mainline so that I
> can cherry-pick final versions for our internal tree, do you have any
> schedule for that?

Thanks, Phil, I've added that. Testing is always good!

The patches are sitting in linux-next now, ready for the next merge window
(ie. 2.6.36)

Cheers,
Rusty.