linux-kernel - Crash in schedule path after worker thread dies

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Message-ID: <20110720000738.GA18774@google.com>
Date:	Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:07:38 -0700
From:	Todd Poynor <toddpoynor@...gle.com>
To:	Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>
Cc:	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Crash in schedule path after worker thread dies

After a worker thread died due to a bug in a work function, a NULL
dereference was seen when schedule calls wq_worker_sleeping calls
kthread_data:

          return to_kthread(task)->data;

mm_release has apparently already set the task's vfork_done = NULL,
causing to_kthread to return a bad address (on 3.0-rc7 on ARM).

I haven't tried a fix because I'm not sure if avoiding this case is
enough to properly recover from death of a worker thread, or if this
has already been discussed and rejected in the past.  I searched
around a little and found some mentions of problems in worker
functions that were probably followed by the kthread_data crash,
but didn't turn up any specific discussion of this crash.  So I
thought I'd start by mentioning this here, and can help fix or test if
needed.

Todd
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