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Groups > linux.kernel > #1457623

A bug in ftrace - dynamic fops

From Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Newsgroups linux.kernel
Subject A bug in ftrace - dynamic fops
Date 2016-08-08 11:00 +0200
Message-ID <s3OzD-7xb-11@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
Organization linux.* mail to news gateway

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Hi Steven,

I am afraid there is a bug in the current mainline's ftrace when dynamic 
fops are involved.

ftrace_shutdown() relies on schedule_on_each_cpu() which should ensure 
that no task stays in a ftrace handler. This was sufficient for a long 
time because every handler was called with the preemption disabled thanks 
to ftrace_ops_list_func (or ftrace_ops_assist_func). Dynamic trampolines 
did not change the behaviour because !PREEMPT was required (commit 
12cce594fa8f ("ftrace/x86: Allow !CONFIG_PREEMPT dynamic ops to use 
allocated trampolines")).

Situation changed with the commit 00ccbf2f5b75 ("ftrace/x86: Let dynamic 
trampolines call ops->func even for dynamic fops"). The purpose of the 
patch is clear - to call ops->func whenever possible and thus gain an 
advantage of dynamic trampolines. But it also allows the handler (that 
very ops->func) to sleep because no atomic context is enforced. This 
breaks the assumption for schedule_on_each_cpu() in ftrace_shutdown() and 
one can crash the kernel quite easily.

It suffices to register dynamic fops with FTRACE_OPS_FL_RECURSION_SAFE set 
(because otherwise ftrace_ops_assist_func() is used which also disables 
preemption), sleep in the handler and meanwhile remove it.

I can imagine two reasonable solutions...

1. introduce something similar to ftrace_ops_assist_func() which would 
just disable preemption before calling ops->func and enable it afterwards.

or

2. implement the whole thing through RCU_TASKS. This would also enable 
dynamic trampolines for PREEMPT kernels.

Revert of 00ccbf2f5b75 commit would be solution as well but there is a 
drawback.

Regards,
Miroslav

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Thread

A bug in ftrace - dynamic fops Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> - 2016-08-08 11:00 +0200
  Re: A bug in ftrace - dynamic fops Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> - 2016-08-08 17:00 +0200
    Re: A bug in ftrace - dynamic fops Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> - 2016-08-09 10:20 +0200
      Re: A bug in ftrace - dynamic fops Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org> - 2016-08-09 14:20 +0200

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