[PATCH] comedi: include poll wait state in busy assessment

From: Jens Axboe
Date: Tue Jul 22 2025 - 08:49:36 EST


syzbot reports a use-after-free in comedi in the below link, which is
due to comedi gladly removing the allocated async area even though poll
requests are still active on the wait_queue_head inside of it. This can
cause a use-after-free when the poll entries are later triggered or
removed, as the memory for the wait_queue_head has been freed. The
notion of being busy in comedi seems mostly centered around sync
syscalls, where the comedi subdevice stores the file in 'busy' as a
marker. This is obviously broken for things like poll which can be
persistent across syscalls.

Rename is_device_busy() to start_detach(), and move it under the
dev->attach_lock. The latter serializes it with poll attempts. If
start_detach() is successful, then it will have marked the device with
->detaching == 1 and this will prevent further poll attempts.

Similarly, have start_detach() check for active polls on the device, and
return busy for that case.

Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fixes: 8ffdff6a8cfb ("staging: comedi: move out of staging directory")
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/687bd5fe.a70a0220.693ce.0091.GAE@xxxxxxxxxx/
Reported-by: syzbot+01523a0ae5600aef5895@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Tested-by: syzbot+01523a0ae5600aef5895@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe <axboe@xxxxxxxxx>

---

diff --git a/drivers/comedi/comedi_fops.c b/drivers/comedi/comedi_fops.c
index c83fd14dd7ad..58b034e45283 100644
--- a/drivers/comedi/comedi_fops.c
+++ b/drivers/comedi/comedi_fops.c
@@ -782,24 +782,33 @@ void comedi_device_cancel_all(struct comedi_device *dev)
}
}

-static int is_device_busy(struct comedi_device *dev)
+static int start_detach(struct comedi_device *dev)
{
struct comedi_subdevice *s;
- int i;
+ int i, is_busy = 0;

lockdep_assert_held(&dev->mutex);
+ lockdep_assert_held(&dev->attach_lock);
if (!dev->attached)
return 0;

for (i = 0; i < dev->n_subdevices; i++) {
s = &dev->subdevices[i];
- if (s->busy)
- return 1;
- if (s->async && comedi_buf_is_mmapped(s))
- return 1;
+ if (s->busy) {
+ is_busy = 1;
+ break;
+ }
+ if (!s->async)
+ continue;
+ if (comedi_buf_is_mmapped(s) ||
+ wq_has_sleeper(&s->async->wait_head)) {
+ is_busy = 1;
+ break;
+ }
}
-
- return 0;
+ if (!is_busy)
+ dev->detaching = 1;
+ return is_busy;
}

/*
@@ -825,8 +834,13 @@ static int do_devconfig_ioctl(struct comedi_device *dev,
return -EPERM;

if (!arg) {
- if (is_device_busy(dev))
+ /* prevent new polls */
+ down_write(&dev->attach_lock);
+ if (start_detach(dev)) {
+ up_write(&dev->attach_lock);
return -EBUSY;
+ }
+ up_write(&dev->attach_lock);
if (dev->attached) {
struct module *driver_module = dev->driver->module;

@@ -2479,7 +2493,7 @@ static __poll_t comedi_poll(struct file *file, poll_table *wait)

down_read(&dev->attach_lock);

- if (!dev->attached) {
+ if (!dev->attached || dev->detaching) {
dev_dbg(dev->class_dev, "no driver attached\n");
goto done;
}
diff --git a/include/linux/comedi/comedidev.h b/include/linux/comedi/comedidev.h
index 4cb0400ad616..b2bec668785f 100644
--- a/include/linux/comedi/comedidev.h
+++ b/include/linux/comedi/comedidev.h
@@ -545,6 +545,7 @@ struct comedi_device {
const char *board_name;
const void *board_ptr;
unsigned int attached:1;
+ unsigned int detaching:1;
unsigned int ioenabled:1;
spinlock_t spinlock; /* generic spin-lock for low-level driver */
struct mutex mutex; /* generic mutex for COMEDI core */

--
Jens Axboe