tty: Fix race condition if flushing tty flip buffers
authorPeter Hurley <peter@hurleysoftware.com>
Wed, 20 Mar 2013 17:20:43 +0000 (13:20 -0400)
committerGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:05:02 +0000 (17:05 -0700)
commit39f610e40eecc39e4c34e047fd6904ca6b525520
tree39af27120456a3a3b68b7068d65a71f5614db008
parent31bdfc649f4577c9b1120c67b7b1e85f7777aad0
tty: Fix race condition if flushing tty flip buffers

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: Ilya Zykov <linux@izyk.ru>
Signed-off-by: Peter Hurley <peter@hurleysoftware.com>
Acked-by: Ilya Zykov <linux@izyk.ru>
Cc: Jiri Slaby <jslaby@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
drivers/tty/tty_buffer.c