[PATCH] sys_getppid oopses on debug kernel

sys_getppid() optimization can access a freed memory.  On kernels with
DEBUG_SLAB turned ON, this results in Oops.  As Dave Hansen noted, this
optimization is also unsafe for memory hotplug.

So this patch always takes the lock to be safe.

[oleg@tv-sign.ru: simplifications]
Signed-off-by: Kirill Korotaev <dev@openvz.org>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>
Cc: Dave Hansen <haveblue@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@tv-sign.ru>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>

1 files changed, 7 insertions, 34 deletions

diff --git a/kernel/timer.c b/kernel/timer.c
index b650f04888ed..1d7dd6267c2d 100644
--- a/kernel/timer.c
+++ b/kernel/timer.c
@@ -1324,46 +1324,19 @@ asmlinkage long sys_getpid(void)
 }
 
 /*
- * Accessing ->group_leader->real_parent is not SMP-safe, it could
- * change from under us. However, rather than getting any lock
- * we can use an optimistic algorithm: get the parent
- * pid, and go back and check that the parent is still
- * the same. If it has changed (which is extremely unlikely
- * indeed), we just try again..
- *
- * NOTE! This depends on the fact that even if we _do_
- * get an old value of "parent", we can happily dereference
- * the pointer (it was and remains a dereferencable kernel pointer
- * no matter what): we just can't necessarily trust the result
- * until we know that the parent pointer is valid.
- *
- * NOTE2: ->group_leader never changes from under us.
+ * Accessing ->real_parent is not SMP-safe, it could
+ * change from under us. However, we can use a stale
+ * value of ->real_parent under rcu_read_lock(), see
+ * release_task()->call_rcu(delayed_put_task_struct).
  */
 asmlinkage long sys_getppid(void)
 {
         int pid;
-        struct task_struct *me = current;
-        struct task_struct *parent;
 
-        parent = me->group_leader->real_parent;
-        for (;;) {
-                pid = parent->tgid;
-#if defined(CONFIG_SMP) || defined(CONFIG_PREEMPT)
-{
-                struct task_struct *old = parent;
+        rcu_read_lock();
+        pid = rcu_dereference(current->real_parent)->tgid;
+        rcu_read_unlock();
 
-                /*
-                 * Make sure we read the pid before re-reading the
-                 * parent pointer:
-                 */
-                smp_rmb();
-                parent = me->group_leader->real_parent;
-                if (old != parent)
-                        continue;
-}
-#endif
-                break;
-        }
         return pid;
 }