Re: [PATCH 3/5] mempolicy: fix a race in shared_policy_replace()

From: KOSAKI Motohiro
Date: Fri Sep 07 2012 - 18:59:37 EST


First off, thank you very much for reworking this for me. I haven't got a chance
to get a test machine for this.

> shared_policy_replace() use of sp_alloc() is unsafe. 1) sp_node cannot
> be dereferenced if sp->lock is not held and 2) another thread can modify
> sp_node between spin_unlock for allocating a new sp node and next spin_lock.
> The bug was introduced before 2.6.12-rc2.
>
> Kosaki's original patch for this problem was to allocate an sp node and policy
> within shared_policy_replace and initialise it when the lock is reacquired. I
> was not keen on this approach because it partially duplicates sp_alloc(). As
> the paths were sp->lock is taken are not that performance critical this
> patch converts sp->lock to sp->mutex so it can sleep when calling sp_alloc().

Looks make sense.

Acked-by: KOSAKI Motohiro <kosaki.motohiro@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


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