Re: Possible spinlock recursion in search_module_extables() ?

From: Jeff Layton
Date: Wed Nov 08 2006 - 12:44:41 EST


On Mon, 2006-06-19 at 06:31 -0400, Chuck Ebbert wrote:
> Looking at this code:
>
> const struct exception_table_entry *search_exception_tables(unsigned long addr)
> {
> const struct exception_table_entry *e;
>
> e = search_extable(__start___ex_table, __stop___ex_table-1, addr);
> if (!e)
> e = search_module_extables(addr);
> return e;
> }
>
> const struct exception_table_entry *search_module_extables(unsigned long addr)
> {
> unsigned long flags;
> const struct exception_table_entry *e = NULL;
> struct module *mod;
>
> spin_lock_irqsave(&modlist_lock, flags);
> list_for_each_entry(mod, &modules, list) {
> if (mod->num_exentries == 0)
> continue;
>
> e = search_extable(mod->extable,
> mod->extable + mod->num_exentries - 1,
> addr);
> if (e)
> break;
> }
> spin_unlock_irqrestore(&modlist_lock, flags);
>
> /* Now, if we found one, we are running inside it now, hence
> we cannot unload the module, hence no refcnt needed. */
> return e;
> }
>
>
> search_module_extables() takes a spinlock. If some kind of fault occurs
> while it's holding that lock (module list corrupted etc.,) won't it be
> re-entered while looking for its own fault handler? If so, would this
> be a possible fix?
>
> const struct exception_table_entry *search_exception_tables(unsigned long addr)
> {
> const struct exception_table_entry *e;
>
> if (core_kernel_text(addr))
> e = search_extable(__start___ex_table, __stop___ex_table-1, addr);
> else
> e = search_module_extables(addr);
>
> return e;
> }

I seem to be able to reliably trigger this spinlock recursion problem
with systemtap on a RHEL4 kernel. The patch suggested above does seem to
correct it, but I'm not familiar enough with extables to know whether
the approach here is correct.

-- Jeff




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