linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH -mm 3/3] proc: make task

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Message-Id: <20100409195936.44663BD18@magilla.sf.frob.com>
Date:	Fri,  9 Apr 2010 12:59:36 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Roland McGrath <roland@...hat.com>
To:	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>
Cc:	David Howells <dhowells@...hat.com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@...il.com>,
	"Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH -mm 3/3] proc: make task_sig() lockless

> Yes. From the changelog:
> 
> 	Of course, this means we read pending/blocked/etc nonatomically,
> 	but I hope this is OK for fs/proc.
> 
> But I don't think the returned data could be "really" inconsistent
> from the /bin/ps pov. Yes, it is possible that, say, some signal is
> seen as both pending and ignored without ->siglock. Or we can report
> user->sigpending != 0 while pending/shpending are empty.
> 
> But this looks harmless to me. We never guaranteed /proc/pid/status
> can't report the "intermediate" state, and I don't think we can
> confuse the user-space.
> 
> Do you agree? Or do you think this can make problems ?

I'm not so sure.  Operations like sigprocmask and sigaction really have
always been entirely atomic from the userland perspective before.  Now it
becomes possible to read from /proc e.g. a blocked set that never existed
as such (one word updated by sigprocmask but not yet the next word).


Thanks,
Roland
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/