linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm: larger stack guard gap, between vmas

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Message-ID: <1499170862.2707.27.camel@decadent.org.uk>
Date:   Tue, 04 Jul 2017 13:21:02 +0100
From:   Ben Hutchings <ben@...adent.org.uk>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
Cc:     Willy Tarreau <w@....eu>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
        Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
        "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@...c4.com>,
        Rik van Riel <riel@...hat.com>,
        Larry Woodman <lwoodman@...hat.com>,
        "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill@...temov.name>,
        Tony Luck <tony.luck@...el.com>,
        "James E.J. Bottomley" <jejb@...isc-linux.org>,
        Helge Diller <deller@....de>,
        James Hogan <james.hogan@...tec.com>,
        Laura Abbott <labbott@...hat.com>, Greg KH <greg@...ah.com>,
        "security@...nel.org" <security@...nel.org>,
        linux-distros@...openwall.org,
        Qualys Security Advisory <qsa@...lys.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Ximin Luo <infinity0@...ian.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: larger stack guard gap, between vmas

On Tue, 2017-07-04 at 14:00 +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Tue 04-07-17 12:36:11, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> > On Tue, 2017-07-04 at 12:42 +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > > On Tue 04-07-17 11:47:28, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jul 04, 2017 at 11:35:38AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> > 
> > [...]
> > > > But wouldn't this completely disable the check in case such a guard page
> > > > is installed, and possibly continue to allow the collision when the stack
> > > > allocation is large enough to skip this guard page ?
> > > 
> > > Yes and but a PROT_NONE would fault and as the changelog says, we _hope_
> > > that userspace does the right thing.
> > 
> > It may well not be large enough, because of the same wrong assumptions
> > that resulted in the kernel's guard page not being large enough.  We
> > should count it as part of the guard gap but not a substitute.
> 
> yes, you are right of course. But isn't this a bug on their side
> considering they are managing their _own_ stack gap?

Yes it's their bug, but you know the rule - don't break user-space.

> Our stack gap
> management is a best effort thing and two such approaches competing will
> always lead to weird cornercases. That was my assumption when saying
> that I am not sure this is really _worth_ it. We should definitely try
> to workaround clashes but that's about it. If others think that we
> should do everything to prevent even those issues I will not oppose
> of course. It just adds more cycles to something that is a weird case
> already.

I don't want odd behaviour to weaken the stack guard.

> [...]
> 
> > This *doesn't* fix the LibreOffice regression on i386.
> 
> Are there any details about this regression?

Here:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=865303#170

I haven't reproduced it in Writer, but if I use Base to create a new
HSQLDB database it reliably crashes (HSQLDB is implemented in Java).

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
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