Re: KCSAN: data-race in __alloc_file / __alloc_file

[Eric Dumazet]

On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 10:05 AM Linus Torvalds
<torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Nov 11, 2019 at 9:52 AM Eric Dumazet <edumazet@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Now I wonder what to do with the ~400 KCSAN reports sitting in
> > pre-moderation queue.
>
> So regular KASAN reports are fairly easy to deal with: they report
> actual bugs. They may be hard to hit, but generally there's no
> question about something like a use-after-free or whatever.
>
> The problem with KCSAN is that it's not clear how many of the reports
> have been actual real honest-to-goodness bugs that could cause
> problems, and how many of them are "this isn't actually a bug, but an
> annotation will shut up KCSAN".
>
> My gut feeling would be that it would be best to ignore the ones that
> are "an annotation will shut up KCSAN", and look at the ones that are
> real bugs.
>
> Is there a pattern to those real bugs? Is there perhaps a way to make
> KCSAN notice _that_ pattern in particular, and suppress the ones that
> are "we can shut these up with annotations that don't really change
> the code"?
>
> I think it would be much better for the kernel - and much better for
> KCSAN - if the problem reports KCSAN reports are real problems that
> can actually be triggered as problems, and that it behaves much more
> like KASAN in that respect.
>
> Yes, yes, then once the *real* problems have been handled, maybe we
> can expand the search to be "stylistic issues" and "in theory, this
> could cause problems with a compiler that did X" issues.
>
> But I think the "just annotate" thing makes people more likely to
> dismiss KCSAN issues, and I don't think it's healthy.
>

Problem is that KASAN/KCSAN stops as soon as one issue is hit,
regardless of it being a false positive or not.

(Same happens with LOCKDEP seeing only one issue, then disabling itself)

If we do not annotate the false positive, the real issues might be
hidden for years.

There is no pattern really, only a lot of noise (small ' bugs'  that
have no real impact)