linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] static_key: fix concurrent static_key_slow

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Message-Id: <576A5138.8040604@de.ibm.com>
Date:	Wed, 22 Jun 2016 10:50:00 +0200
From:	Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@...ibm.com>
To:	Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	kvm@...r.kernel.org
Cc:	stable@...r.kernel.org, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] static_key: fix concurrent static_key_slow_inc

On 06/21/2016 06:52 PM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> The following scenario is possible:
> 
>     CPU 1                                   CPU 2
>     static_key_slow_inc
>      atomic_inc_not_zero
>       -> key.enabled == 0, no increment
>      jump_label_lock
>      atomic_inc_return
>       -> key.enabled == 1 now
>                                             static_key_slow_inc
>                                              atomic_inc_not_zero
>                                               -> key.enabled == 1, inc to 2
>                                              return
>                                             ** static key is wrong!
>      jump_label_update
>      jump_label_unlock
> 
> Testing the static key at the point marked by (**) will follow the wrong
> path for jumps that have not been patched yet.  This can actually happen
> when creating many KVM virtual machines with userspace LAPIC emulation;
> just run several copies of the following program:
> 
>     #include <fcntl.h>
>     #include <unistd.h>
>     #include <sys/ioctl.h>
>     #include <linux/kvm.h>
> 
>     int main(void)
>     {
>         for (;;) {
>             int kvmfd = open("/dev/kvm", O_RDONLY);
>             int vmfd = ioctl(kvmfd, KVM_CREATE_VM, 0);
>             close(ioctl(vmfd, KVM_CREATE_VCPU, 1));
>             close(vmfd);
>             close(kvmfd);
>         }
>         return 0;
>     }
> 
> Every KVM_CREATE_VCPU ioctl will attempt a static_key_slow_inc.  The
> static key's purpose is to skip NULL pointer checks and indeed one of
> the processes eventually dereferences NULL.


Interesting. Some time ago I had a spurious bug on the preempt_notifier
when starting/stopping lots of guests, but I was never able to reliably 
reproduce it. I was chasing some other bug, so I did not even considered
static_key to be broken, but this might actually be the fix for that
problem.