race in usbnet.c in full RT

From: Eugeny S. Mints
Date: Wed Jun 08 2005 - 05:14:05 EST


Hi,

seems there is a race in drivers/net/usbnet.c in full RT mode. To be honest I haven't hardly checked this on the latest kernel and latest RT patch but just took a look at usbnet.c and latest RT patch and haven't observed any related changes.

The usbnet_start_xmit() contains the following code:

...
spin_lock_irqsave (&dev->txq.lock, flags);

#ifdef CONFIG_USB_NET1080
if (info->flags & FLAG_FRAMING_NC) {
header->packet_id = cpu_to_le16 ((u16)dev->dev_packet_id++);
put_unaligned (header->packet_id, &trailer->packet_id);
#if 0
devdbg (dev, "frame >tx h %d p %d id %d",
header->hdr_len, header->packet_len,
header->packet_id);
#endif
}
#endif /* CONFIG_USB_NET1080 */

switch ((retval = usb_submit_urb (urb, GFP_ATOMIC))) {
case -EPIPE:
netif_stop_queue (net);
defer_kevent (dev, EVENT_TX_HALT);
break;
default:
devdbg (dev, "tx: submit urb err %d", retval);
break;
case 0:
net->trans_start = jiffies;
__skb_queue_tail (&dev->txq, skb);
if (dev->txq.qlen >= TX_QLEN (dev))
netif_stop_queue (net);
}
spin_unlock_irqrestore (&dev->txq.lock, flags);
...

THe race in full RT is between tx_complete() routine and __skb_queue_tail (&dev->txq, skb): skb->list gets initialized in __skb_queue_tail() but may be dereferenced before initialization at defer_bh() called from tx_complete() (since tx_complete() and usbnet_start_xmit() are completely asynchronous routines).

in non-RT case spin_lock_irqsave (&dev->txq.lock, flags) disables interrupts and thus code from usb_submit_urb() call upto __skb_queue_tail (&dev->txq, skb) executes atomically. But in RT case interrupts are not disabled and usb_submit_urb() triggers an interrupt which may cause tx_complete() execution before __skb_queue_tail () call. And since skb->list gets initialized just at __skb_queue_tail(), call to tx_complete() (via defer_bh() which thus executes before __skb_queue_tail) dereferences NULL (skb->list) pointer.

Thus looks tx_complete() and usbnet_start_xmit() require a serialization. Please find proposed fix attached though not sure the patch will apply cleanly to the latest kernel.

Eugeny --- a/drivers/usb/net/usbnet.c 2004-12-25 00:34:58.000000000 +0300
+++ b/drivers/usb/net/usbnet.c 2005-05-26 21:02:58.000000000 +0400
@@ -2820,6 +2820,8 @@

urb->dev = NULL;
entry->state = tx_done;
+ spin_lock_rt (&dev->txq.lock);
+ spin_unlock_rt(&dev->txq.lock);
defer_bh (dev, skb);
}