linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH locking/Documentation 1/2] Add note of release-acquire store vulnerability

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Message-ID: <20160929160307.GT13862@arm.com>
Date:   Thu, 29 Sep 2016 17:03:08 +0100
From:   Will Deacon <will.deacon@....com>
To:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:     "Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, mingo@...nel.org,
        dhowells@...hat.com, stern@...land.harvard.edu
Subject: Re: [PATCH locking/Documentation 1/2] Add note of release-acquire
 store vulnerability

On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 05:58:17PM +0200, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 29, 2016 at 08:54:01AM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > If two processes are related by a RELEASE+ACQUIRE pair, ordering can be
> > broken if a third process overwrites the value written by the RELEASE
> > operation before the ACQUIRE operation has a chance of reading it.
> > This commit therefore updates the documentation to call this vulnerability
> > out explicitly.
> > 
> > Reported-by: Alan Stern <stern@...land.harvard.edu>
> > Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney <paulmck@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>
> 
> > +     However, please note that a chain of RELEASE+ACQUIRE pairs may be
> > +     broken by a store by another thread that overwrites the RELEASE
> > +     operation's store before the ACQUIRE operation's read.
> 
> This is the powerpc lwsync quirk, right? Where the barrier disappears
> when it looses the store.
> 
> Or is there more to it? Its not entirely clear from the Changelog, which
> I feel should describe the reason for the behaviour.

If I've groked it correctly, it's for cases like:


PO:
Wx=1
WyRel=1

P1:
Wy=2

P2:
RyAcq=2
Rx=0

Final value of y is 2.


This is permitted on arm64. If you make P1's store a store-release, then
it's forbidden, but I suspect that's not generally true of the kernel
memory model.

Will