linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v8 07/11] proc: flush task dcache entries from all procfs instances

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Date:   Wed, 12 Feb 2020 19:47:28 +0000
From:   Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Kernel Hardening <kernel-hardening@...ts.openwall.com>,
        Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux FS Devel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux Security Module <linux-security-module@...r.kernel.org>,
        Akinobu Mita <akinobu.mita@...il.com>,
        Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@...il.com>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Daniel Micay <danielmicay@...il.com>,
        Djalal Harouni <tixxdz@...il.com>,
        "Dmitry V . Levin" <ldv@...linux.org>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        "J . Bruce Fields" <bfields@...ldses.org>,
        Jeff Layton <jlayton@...chiereds.net>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@....net>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
        Solar Designer <solar@...nwall.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v8 07/11] proc: flush task dcache entries from all procfs
 instances

On Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 10:45:06AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 7:01 AM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@...ssion.com> wrote:
> >
> > Fundamentally proc_flush_task is an optimization.  Just getting rid of
> > dentries earlier.  At least at one point it was an important
> > optimization because the old process dentries would just sit around
> > doing nothing for anyone.
> 
> I'm pretty sure it's still important. It's very easy to generate a
> _ton_ of dentries with /proc.
> 
> > I wonder if instead of invalidating specific dentries we could instead
> > fire wake up a shrinker and point it at one or more instances of proc.
> 
> It shouldn't be the dentries themselves that are a freeing problem.
> They're being RCU-free'd anyway because of lookup. It's the
> proc_mounts list that is the problem, isn't it?
> 
> So it's just fs_info that needs to be rcu-delayed because it contains
> that list. Or is there something else?

Large part of the headache is the possibility that some joker has
done something like mounting tmpfs on /proc/<pid>/map_files, or
binding /dev/null on top of /proc/<pid>/syscall, etc.

IOW, that d_invalidate() can very well have to grab namespace_sem.
And possibly do a full-blown fs shutdown of something NFS-mounted,
etc...