Re: [PATCH] Update comment on find_task_by_pid_ns

From: Thomas Gleixner
Date: Wed Feb 10 2010 - 13:41:13 EST


On Wed, 10 Feb 2010, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:30:33 -0600 "Serge E. Hallyn" <serue@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > Quoting Andrew Morton (akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx):
> > > On Tue, 9 Feb 2010 06:42:45 +0900
> > > Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > > OK. I updated description.
> > > >
> > > > As of 2.6.32 , below users are missing rcu_read_lock().
> > > >
> > > > Users missing rcu_read_lock() when calling find_task_by_vpid():
> > > >
> > > > SYSCALL_DEFINE3(ioprio_set) in fs/ioprio.c
> > > > SYSCALL_DEFINE2(ioprio_get) in fs/ioprio.c
> > > > cap_get_target_pid() in kernel/capability.c
> > >
> > > Actually, cap_get_target_pid() uses rcu_read_lock() and doesn't take
> > > tasklist_lock.
> >
> > Hmm - is that in -mm? In my copy here it takes read_lock(&tasklist_lock)
>
> yup. It got changed in linux-next.
>
> > And I'll admit I'm a bit confused as to the current state of things:
> > do I understand correctly that we now need to take both the tasklist_lock
> > and rcu_read_lock? (Presumably only for read_lock()?)
>
> Beats me. We need to protect both the pid->task_struct lookup data
> structures (during the lookup) and protect the resulting task_struct
> while the caller is playing with it. It's unclear whether
> rcu_read_lock() suffices for both purposes.

The rcu_read_lock section is sufficient. task_struct can not go away
before the rcu_read_unlock()

Thanks,

tglx
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