Re: [PATCH] pidns: remove recursion from free_pid_ns() v5

From: Eric W. Biederman
Date: Wed Oct 10 2012 - 16:59:42 EST


Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:42:56 +0400
> Cyrill Gorcunov <gorcunov@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> The free_pid_ns function done in recursion fashion:
>>
>> free_pid_ns(parent)
>> put_pid_ns(parent)
>> kref_put(&ns->kref, free_pid_ns);
>> free_pid_ns
>>
>> thus if there was a huge nesting of namespaces the userspace
>> may trigger avalanche calling of free_pid_ns leading to
>> kernel stack exhausting and a panic eventually.
>>
>> This patch turns the recursion into iterative loop.
>>
>> v5 (from oleg@):
>> - Drop @ret variable
>> - Make put_pid_ns non-inline since it grows in size,
>> in turn make free_pid_ns static
>
> OK, let's try that. I'll sit on this until -rc2 to give it a bit of
> time to cook.
>
> A -stable backport might be needed. What capabilities does userspace
> need to be able to trigger the kernel stack overflow?

CAP_SYS_ADMIN is required to create a new pid namespace today.

With a little luck the user namespace bits that allow unprivelged
creation of pid namespaces will be ready for 3.8.

Eric

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/