[PATCH 3.16 110/233] slub/memcg: cure the brainless abuse of sysfs attributes

From: Ben Hutchings
Date: Sat Sep 09 2017 - 19:03:48 EST


3.16.48-rc1 review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know.

------------------

From: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

commit 478fe3037b2278d276d4cd9cd0ab06c4cb2e9b32 upstream.

memcg_propagate_slab_attrs() abuses the sysfs attribute file functions
to propagate settings from the root kmem_cache to a newly created
kmem_cache. It does that with:

attr->show(root, buf);
attr->store(new, buf, strlen(bug);

Aside of being a lazy and absurd hackery this is broken because it does
not check the return value of the show() function.

Some of the show() functions return 0 w/o touching the buffer. That
means in such a case the store function is called with the stale content
of the previous show(). That causes nonsense like invoking
kmem_cache_shrink() on a newly created kmem_cache. In the worst case it
would cause handing in an uninitialized buffer.

This should be rewritten proper by adding a propagate() callback to
those slub_attributes which must be propagated and avoid that insane
conversion to and from ASCII, but that's too large for a hot fix.

Check at least the return value of the show() function, so calling
store() with stale content is prevented.

Steven said:
"It can cause a deadlock with get_online_cpus() that has been uncovered
by recent cpu hotplug and lockdep changes that Thomas and Peter have
been doing.

Possible unsafe locking scenario:

CPU0 CPU1
---- ----
lock(cpu_hotplug.lock);
lock(slab_mutex);
lock(cpu_hotplug.lock);
lock(slab_mutex);

*** DEADLOCK ***"

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/alpine.DEB.2.20.1705201244540.2255@nanos
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reported-by: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Acked-by: David Rientjes <rientjes@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@xxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@xxxxxxx>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Ben Hutchings <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
mm/slub.c | 6 ++++--
1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

--- a/mm/slub.c
+++ b/mm/slub.c
@@ -5066,6 +5066,7 @@ static void memcg_propagate_slab_attrs(s
char mbuf[64];
char *buf;
struct slab_attribute *attr = to_slab_attr(slab_attrs[i]);
+ ssize_t len;

if (!attr || !attr->store || !attr->show)
continue;
@@ -5090,8 +5091,9 @@ static void memcg_propagate_slab_attrs(s
buf = buffer;
}

- attr->show(root_cache, buf);
- attr->store(s, buf, strlen(buf));
+ len = attr->show(root_cache, buf);
+ if (len > 0)
+ attr->store(s, buf, len);
}

if (buffer)