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SubjectRe: BUG: Problem with your patches for sysfs from 2 weeks ago
On Sat, Mar 27, 2004 at 05:25:07PM -0500, Alan Stern wrote:
> Maneesh:
>
> I've been tracing a problem with sysfs that starting showing up just
> recently, and it seems likely to have originated with your patches from a
> couple of weeks ago. I can't tell exactly what's wrong or fix it because
> I don't understand the filesystem layer well enough.
>
> The problem I found (there may be others) shows up when trying to delete a
> nonexistent symlink -- presumably trying to delete a nonexistent file
> would have a similar result. The code in sysfs_hash_and_remove() does a
> lookup on the nonexistent name and sysfs_get_dentry() returns a
> newly-allocated dentry. Creating the new entry increments the parent
> directory's d_count, of course. But at the end of the routine, when
> dput() is called for the new dentry, the parent's d_count does _not_ get
> decremented. The new dentry is placed on the dentry_unused list and the
> parent is left with an anomalously large d_count. This doesn't ever seem
> to get resolved, and when the directory's kobject is deleted the reference
> you added doesn't get dropped.
>

I see the problem here. Probably same will happen even if a non-existent
regular file is deleted. Negative dentry and the ref. taken on the parent
should go away eventually when there is a memory pressure. But the situation
here needs immediate removal of the negative dentry.

This could be solved partially if sysfs_hash_and_remove() handles negative
dentries as well by unhashing them before calling dput().

Partially because sysfs_hash_and_remove() is called only if some kernel
level code (drivers) issues sysfs_remove_file() or sysfs_create_file().
But if a user just goes to the corresponding directory and does rm
for a non-existent file, I guess we will have the same situation. This needs
some solution.

The patch (sysfs-pin-kobject.patch) I did was required for oops
(Use after free) situations like this

=============================================================================
Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address db368dc0
printing eip:
c01f8690
*pde = 5a5a5a5a
Oops: 0000 [#1]
CPU: 0
EIP: 0060:[<c01f8690>] Not tainted
EFLAGS: 00010282
EIP is at kobject_get+0x10/0x50
eax: db368da8 ebx: db368da8 ecx: 00000001 edx: d6d0ff68
esi: db69ee88 edi: db69ee88 ebp: d7ed3f0c esp: d7ed3ef8
ds: 007b es: 007b ss: 0068
Process cat (pid: 30394, threadinfo=d7ed2000 task=d63dc9b0)
Stack: c014a447 d6d0ff68 c1fb9aec 00000001 d6d0ff68 d7ed3f30 c019f500 db368da8
d7ed3f30 c016601b d6d0ff68 d6d0ff68 db69ee88 c1fa9c44 d7ed3f50 c01640ec
db69ee88 d6d0ff68 ffffffe9 00008000 00008000 d975e000 d7ed3f9c c0163fa6
Call Trace:
[<c014a447>] kmem_cache_alloc+0x107/0x240
[<c019f500>] check_perm+0x20/0x190
[<c016601b>] get_empty_filp+0x7b/0x110
[<c01640ec>] dentry_open+0x13c/0x1f0
[<c0163fa6>] filp_open+0x66/0x70
[<c0164545>] sys_open+0x55/0x90
[<c010b651>] sysenter_past_esp+0x52/0x71

Code: 8b 43 18 85 c0 74 0d f0 ff 43 18 89 d8 8b 5d fc 89 ec 5d c3


--
Maneesh Soni
Linux Technology Center,
IBM Software Lab, Bangalore, India
email: maneesh@in.ibm.com
Phone: 91-80-25044999 Fax: 91-80-25268553
T/L : 9243696
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