Re: [PATCH v3] kdb: Make memory allocations more robust

[Doug Anderson]

Hi,

On Fri, Jan 22, 2021 at 3:06 AM Sumit Garg <sumit.garg@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Currently kdb uses in_interrupt() to determine whether its library
> code has been called from the kgdb trap handler or from a saner calling
> context such as driver init.  This approach is broken because
> in_interrupt() alone isn't able to determine kgdb trap handler entry from
> normal task context. This can happen during normal use of basic features
> such as breakpoints and can also be trivially reproduced using:
> echo g > /proc/sysrq-trigger

I guess an alternative to your patch is to fully eliminate GFP_KDB.
It always strikes me as a sub-optimal design to choose between
GFP_ATOMIC and GFP_KERNEL like this.  Presumably others must agree
because otherwise I'd expect that the overall kernel would have
something like "GFP_AUTOMATIC"?

It doesn't feel like it'd be that hard to do something more explicit.
>From a quick glance:

* I think kdb_defcmd() and kdb_defcmd2() are always called in response
to a user typing something on the kdb command line.  Those should
always be GFP_ATOMIC, right?

* The one call that's not in kdb_defcmd() / kdb_defcmd2() is in
kdb_register_flags().  That can be called either during init time or
from kdb_defcmd2().  It doesn't seem like it'd be hard to rename
kdb_register_flags() to _kdb_register_flags() and add a "gfp_t flags"
to the end.  Then the exported kdb_register_flags() would pass
GFP_KERNEL and the call from kdb_defcmd2() would pass GFP_ATOMIC:


> We can improve this by adding check for in_dbg_master() instead which

s/adding check/adding a check/


> explicitly determines if we are running in debugger context.
>
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: Sumit Garg <sumit.garg@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
> Changes in v3:
> - Refined commit description and Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
>
> Changes in v2:
> - Get rid of redundant in_atomic() check.
>
>  kernel/debug/kdb/kdb_private.h | 2 +-
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

I would leave it up to Daniel to say whether he agrees that a full
removal of "GFP_KDB" would be a better solution.  However, your patch
clearly improves the state of things, so:

Reviewed-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx>