Skip to content
  • Peter Hurley's avatar
    tty: Fix race condition if flushing tty flip buffers · 39f610e4
    Peter Hurley authored
    
    
    As Ilya Zykov identified in his patch 'PROBLEM: Race condition in
    tty buffer's function flush_to_ldisc()', a race condition exists
    which allows a parallel flush_to_ldisc() to flush and free the tty
    flip buffers while those buffers are in-use. For example,
    
      CPU 0                         |  CPU 1                                  |  CPU 2
                                    | flush_to_ldisc()                        |
                                    |  grab spin lock                         |
    tty_buffer_flush()              |                                         | flush_to_ldisc()
     wait for spin lock             |                                         |  wait for spin lock
                                    |   if (!test_and_set_bit(TTYP_FLUSHING)) |
                                    |    while (next flip buffer)             |
                                    |     ...                                 |
                                    |     drop spin lock                      |
      grab spin lock                |                                         |
       if (test_bit(TTYP_FLUSHING)) |                                         |
        set_bit(TTYP_FLUSHPENDING)  |      receive_buf()                      |
        drop spin lock              |                                         |
                                    |                                         |   grab spin lock
                                    |                                         |    if (!test_and_set_bit(TTYP_FLUSHING))
                                    |                                         |    if (test_bit(TTYP_FLUSHPENDING))
                                    |                                         |    __tty_buffer_flush()
    
    CPU 2 has just flushed and freed all tty flip buffers while CPU 1 is
    transferring data from the head flip buffer.
    
    The original patch was rejected under the assumption that parallel
    flush_to_ldisc() was not possible. Because of necessary changes to
    the workqueue api, work items can execute in parallel on SMP.
    
    This patch differs slightly from the original patch by testing for
    a pending flush _after_ each receive_buf(), since TTYP_FLUSHPENDING
    can only be set while the lock is dropped around receive_buf().
    
    Reported-by: default avatarIlya Zykov <linux@izyk.ru>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Hurley <peter@hurleysoftware.com>
    Acked-by: default avatarIlya Zykov <linux@izyk.ru>
    Cc: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
    39f610e4