[PATCH] proc: readdir race fix (take 3)

The problem: An opendir, readdir, closedir sequence can fail to report
process ids that are continually in use throughout the sequence of system
calls.  For this race to trigger the process that proc_pid_readdir stops at
must exit before readdir is called again.

This can cause ps to fail to report processes, and it is in violation of
posix guarantees and normal application expectations with respect to
readdir.

Currently there is no way to work around this problem in user space short
of providing a gargantuan buffer to user space so the directory read all
happens in on system call.

This patch implements the normal directory semantics for proc, that
guarantee that a directory entry that is neither created nor destroyed
while reading the directory entry will be returned.  For directory that are
either created or destroyed during the readdir you may or may not see them.
 Furthermore you may seek to a directory offset you have previously seen.

These are the guarantee that ext[23] provides and that posix requires, and
more importantly that user space expects.  Plus it is a simple semantic to
implement reliable service.  It is just a matter of calling readdir a
second time if you are wondering if something new has show up.

These better semantics are implemented by scanning through the pids in
numerical order and by making the file offset a pid plus a fixed offset.

The pid scan happens on the pid bitmap, which when you look at it is
remarkably efficient for a brute force algorithm.  Given that a typical
cache line is 64 bytes and thus covers space for 64*8 == 200 pids.  There
are only 40 cache lines for the entire 32K pid space.  A typical system
will have 100 pids or more so this is actually fewer cache lines we have to
look at to scan a linked list, and the worst case of having to scan the
entire pid bitmap is pretty reasonable.

If we need something more efficient we can go to a more efficient data
structure for indexing the pids, but for now what we have should be
sufficient.

In addition this takes no additional locks and is actually less code than
what we are doing now.

Also another very subtle bug in this area has been fixed.  It is possible
to catch a task in the middle of de_thread where a thread is assuming the
thread of it's thread group leader.  This patch carefully handles that case
so if we hit it we don't fail to return the pid, that is undergoing the
de_thread dance.

Thanks to KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com> for
providing the first fix, pointing this out and working on it.

[oleg@tv-sign.ru: fix it]
Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Acked-by: KAMEZAWA Hiroyuki <kamezawa.hiroyu@jp.fujitsu.com>
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
Cc: Jean Delvare <jdelvare@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 35 insertions, 69 deletions

diff --git a/fs/proc/base.c b/fs/proc/base.c
index 89c20d9d50bf..b18f3773dd43 100644
--- a/fs/proc/base.c
+++ b/fs/proc/base.c
@@ -2142,72 +2142,43 @@ out_no_task:
 }
 
 /*
- * Find the first tgid to return to user space.
+ * Find the first task with tgid >= tgid
  *
- * Usually this is just whatever follows &init_task, but if the users
- * buffer was too small to hold the full list or there was a seek into
- * the middle of the directory we have more work to do.
- *
- * In the case of a short read we start with find_task_by_pid.
- *
- * In the case of a seek we start with &init_task and walk nr
- * threads past it.
  */
-static struct task_struct *first_tgid(int tgid, unsigned int nr)
+static struct task_struct *next_tgid(unsigned int tgid)
 {
-        struct task_struct *pos;
-        rcu_read_lock();
-        if (tgid && nr) {
-                pos = find_task_by_pid(tgid);
-                if (pos && thread_group_leader(pos))
-                        goto found;
-        }
-        /* If nr exceeds the number of processes get out quickly */
-        pos = NULL;
-        if (nr && nr >= nr_processes())
-                goto done;
-
-        /* If we haven't found our starting place yet start with
-         * the init_task and walk nr tasks forward.
-         */
-        for (pos = next_task(&init_task); nr > 0; --nr) {
-                pos = next_task(pos);
-                if (pos == &init_task) {
-                        pos = NULL;
-                        goto done;
-                }
-        }
-found:
-        get_task_struct(pos);
-done:
-        rcu_read_unlock();
-        return pos;
-}
+        struct task_struct *task;
+        struct pid *pid;
 
-/*
- * Find the next task in the task list.
- * Return NULL if we loop or there is any error.
- *
- * The reference to the input task_struct is released.
- */
-static struct task_struct *next_tgid(struct task_struct *start)
-{
-        struct task_struct *pos;
         rcu_read_lock();
-        pos = start;
-        if (pid_alive(start))
-                pos = next_task(start);
-        if (pid_alive(pos) && (pos != &init_task)) {
-                get_task_struct(pos);
-                goto done;
+retry:
+        task = NULL;
+        pid = find_ge_pid(tgid);
+        if (pid) {
+                tgid = pid->nr + 1;
+                task = pid_task(pid, PIDTYPE_PID);
+                /* What we to know is if the pid we have find is the
+                 * pid of a thread_group_leader.  Testing for task
+                 * being a thread_group_leader is the obvious thing
+                 * todo but there is a window when it fails, due to
+                 * the pid transfer logic in de_thread.
+                 *
+                 * So we perform the straight forward test of seeing
+                 * if the pid we have found is the pid of a thread
+                 * group leader, and don't worry if the task we have
+                 * found doesn't happen to be a thread group leader.
+                 * As we don't care in the case of readdir.
+                 */
+                if (!task || !has_group_leader_pid(task))
+                        goto retry;
+                get_task_struct(task);
         }
-        pos = NULL;
-done:
         rcu_read_unlock();
-        put_task_struct(start);
-        return pos;
+        return task;
 }
 
+#define TGID_OFFSET (FIRST_PROCESS_ENTRY + (1 /* /proc/self */))
+
 /* for the /proc/ directory itself, after non-process stuff has been done */
 int proc_pid_readdir(struct file * filp, void * dirent, filldir_t filldir)
 {
@@ -2223,29 +2194,24 @@ int proc_pid_readdir(struct file * filp, void * dirent, filldir_t filldir)
                 filp->f_pos++;
                 nr++;
         }
-        nr -= 1;
 
-        /* f_version caches the tgid value that the last readdir call couldn't
-         * return. lseek aka telldir automagically resets f_version to 0.
-         */
-        tgid = filp->f_version;
-        filp->f_version = 0;
-        for (task = first_tgid(tgid, nr);
+        tgid = filp->f_pos - TGID_OFFSET;
+        for (task = next_tgid(tgid);
              task;
-             task = next_tgid(task), filp->f_pos++) {
+             put_task_struct(task), task = next_tgid(tgid + 1)) {
                 int len;
                 ino_t ino;
                 tgid = task->pid;
+                filp->f_pos = tgid + TGID_OFFSET;
                 len = snprintf(buf, sizeof(buf), "%d", tgid);
                 ino = fake_ino(tgid, PROC_TGID_INO);
                 if (filldir(dirent, buf, len, filp->f_pos, ino, DT_DIR) < 0) {
-                        /* returning this tgid failed, save it as the first
-                         * pid for the next readir call */
-                        filp->f_version = tgid;
                         put_task_struct(task);
-                        break;
+                        goto out;
                 }
         }
+        filp->f_pos = PID_MAX_LIMIT + TGID_OFFSET;
+out:
         return 0;
 }