Re: [PATCH RESEND] PCI: s390: Fix use-after-free of PCI bus resources with s390 per-function hotplug

From: Lukas Wunner
Date: Thu Feb 23 2023 - 23:19:26 EST


On Thu, Feb 23, 2023 at 01:53:45PM -0600, Bjorn Helgaas wrote:
> Hmm. Good question. Off the top of my head, I can't explain the
> difference between pci_rescan_remove_lock and pci_bus_sem, so I'm
> confused, too. I added Lukas in case he has a ready explanation.

pci_bus_sem is a global lock which protects the "devices" list of all
pci_bus structs.

We do have a bunch of places left where the "devices" list is accessed
without holding pci_bus_sem, though I've tried to slowly eliminate
them.

pci_rescan_remove_lock is a global "big kernel lock" which serializes
any device addition and removal.

pci_rescan_remove_lock is known to be far too course-grained and thus
deadlock-prone, particularly if hotplug ports are nested (as is the
case with Thunderbolt). It needs to be split up into several smaller
locks which protect e.g. allocation of resources of a bus (bus numbers
or MMIO / IO space) and whatever else needs to be protected. It's just
that nobody has gotten around to identify what exactly needs to be
protected, adding the new locks and removing pci_rescan_remove_lock.

Thanks,

Lukas