linux-kernel - Re: 3.9-rc1 NULL pointer crash at find_pid

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Date:	Thu, 07 Mar 2013 10:05:34 -0800
From:	ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:	Sasha Levin <sasha.levin@...cle.com>
Cc:	Eric Dumazet <eric.dumazet@...il.com>,
	"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
	Li Zefan <lizefan@...wei.com>, CAI Qian <caiqian@...hat.com>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Containers <containers@...ts.linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: 3.9-rc1 NULL pointer crash at find_pid_ns

Sasha Levin <sasha.levin@...cle.com> writes:

> On 03/07/2013 12:46 PM, Eric Dumazet wrote:
>> On Thu, 2013-03-07 at 12:36 -0500, Sasha Levin wrote:
>> 
>>> Looks like the hlist change is probably the issue, though it specifically
>>> uses:
>>>
>>> 	#define hlist_entry_safe(ptr, type, member) \
>>>         	(ptr) ? hlist_entry(ptr, type, member) : NULL
>>>
>>> I'm still looking at the code in question and it's assembly, but I can't
>>> figure out what's going wrong. I was also trying to see what's so special
>>> about this loop in find_pid_ns as opposed to the rest of the kernel code
>>> that uses hlist_for_each_entry_rcu() but couldn't find out why.
>>>
>>> Is it somehow possible that if we rcu_dereference_raw() the same thing twice
>>> inside the same rcu_read_lock() section we'll get different results? That's
>>> really the only reason for this crash that comes to mind at the moment, very
>>> unlikely - but that's all I have right now.
>>>
>> 
>> Yep
>> 
>> #define hlist_entry_safe(ptr, type, member) \
>> 	(ptr) ? hlist_entry(ptr, type, member) : NULL
>> 
>> Is not safe, as ptr can be evaluated twice, and thats not good at all...
>
> ptr is being evaluated twice, but in this case this is an
> rcu_dereference_raw() value within the same rcu_read_lock() section.
>
> Is it still problematic?

Definitely.

Head in this instance the expression: &pid_hash[pid_hashfn(nr, ns)]

And the crash clearly shows that when hilst_entry is being evaluated the
HEAD is NULL.

Perhaps this shows up in proc because the hash chains are short and
frequently NULL?

Eric
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