linux-kernel - Re: [RFC 2/2] signal: extend pidfd_send_signal() to allow expedited process killing

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Fri, 12 Apr 2019 07:14:30 -0700
From:   Daniel Colascione <dancol@...gle.com>
To:     Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org>
Cc:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
        yuzhoujian@...ichuxing.com,
        Souptick Joarder <jrdr.linux@...il.com>,
        Roman Gushchin <guro@...com>,
        Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>,
        Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@...ove.sakura.ne.jp>,
        "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
        Shakeel Butt <shakeelb@...gle.com>,
        Christian Brauner <christian@...uner.io>,
        Minchan Kim <minchan@...nel.org>,
        Tim Murray <timmurray@...gle.com>,
        Joel Fernandes <joel@...lfernandes.org>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>, linux-mm <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        lsf-pc@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
        linux-kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Android Kernel Team <kernel-team@...roid.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC 2/2] signal: extend pidfd_send_signal() to allow expedited
 process killing

On Thu, Apr 11, 2019 at 11:53 PM Michal Hocko <mhocko@...nel.org> wrote:
>
> On Thu 11-04-19 08:33:13, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > On Wed, Apr 10, 2019 at 06:43:53PM -0700, Suren Baghdasaryan wrote:
> > > Add new SS_EXPEDITE flag to be used when sending SIGKILL via
> > > pidfd_send_signal() syscall to allow expedited memory reclaim of the
> > > victim process. The usage of this flag is currently limited to SIGKILL
> > > signal and only to privileged users.
> >
> > What is the downside of doing expedited memory reclaim?  ie why not do it
> > every time a process is going to die?
>
> Well, you are tearing down an address space which might be still in use
> because the task not fully dead yeat. So there are two downsides AFAICS.
> Core dumping which will not see the reaped memory so the resulting

Test for SIGNAL_GROUP_COREDUMP before doing any of this then. If you
try to start a core dump after reaping begins, too bad: you could have
raced with process death anyway.

> coredump might be incomplete. And unexpected #PF/gup on the reaped
> memory will result in SIGBUS.

It's a dying process. Why even bother returning from the fault
handler? Just treat that situation as a thread exit. There's no need
to make this observable to userspace at all.