Re: [PATCH] keys/keyctl: Use kfree_rcu instead of kfree

[Siddh Raman Pant]

On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 19:35:16 +0530  Greg KH <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> That does not explain why this change is needed.  What problem does this
> solve?  Why use RCU if you don't have to?  What functionality did you
> just change in this commit and why?

We can avoid a race condition wherein some process tries to access them while
they are being freed. For instance, the comment on `watch_queue_clear()` also
states that:
        /*
         * Remove all the watches that are contributory to a queue.  This has the
         * potential to race with removal of the watches by the destruction of the
         * objects being watched or with the distribution of notifications.
         */
And an RCU read critical section is initiated in that function, so we should
use kfree_rcu() to not unintentionally free it while it is in the critical
section.

> And how was this tested?

It compiles locally for me, and I used syzbot on this along with testing the
other `watch_queue_clear` patch, which generated no errors.

Thanks,
Siddh