Re: Is usb_hcd_giveback_urb() allowed in task context?

From: Alan Stern
Date: Mon Oct 05 2020 - 11:22:21 EST


On Mon, Oct 05, 2020 at 05:08:11PM +0200, Andrey Konovalov wrote:
> Dear USB and USB/IP maintainers,
>
> While fuzzing the USB/IP stack with syzkaller we've stumbled upon an issue.
>
> Currently kcov (the subsystem that is used for coverage collection)
> USB-related callbacks assume that usb_hcd_giveback_urb() can only be
> called from interrupt context, as indicated by the comment before the
> function definition.

The primary reason for this restriction (as far as I'm aware) is because
the routine uses spin_lock/spin_unlock rather than the
_irqsave/_irqrestore variants. There's also a small efficiency issue:
In the vast majority of cases involving real host controllers, the
routine _will_ be called in interrupt context. So we optimized for that
case.

> In the USB/IP code, however, it's called from the
> task context (see the stack trace below).
>
> Is this something that is allowed and we need to fix kcov? Or is this
> a bug in USB/IP?

It's a bug in USB/IP. Interrupts should be disabled when it calls
usb_hcd_giveback_urb().

Alan Stern