linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 1/8] signal: Make SIGKILL during coredumps an explicit special case

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Date:   Wed, 26 Jan 2022 10:06:23 -0500
From:   Olivier Langlois <olivier@...llion01.com>
To:     "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>
Cc:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Heiko Carstens <hca@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "<linux-arch@...r.kernel.org>" <linux-arch@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux API <linux-api@...r.kernel.org>,
        Alexey Gladkov <legion@...nel.org>,
        Kyle Huey <me@...ehuey.com>, Oleg Nesterov <oleg@...hat.com>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        Jens Axboe <axboe@...nel.dk>,
        Pavel Begunkov <asml.silence@...il.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/8] signal: Make SIGKILL during coredumps an explicit
 special case

On Mon, 2022-01-17 at 10:09 -0600, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> Olivier Langlois <olivier@...llion01.com> writes:
> From my perspective I am not at all convinced that io_uring is the
> only
> culprit.
> 
> Beyond that the purpose of a coredump is to snapshot the process as
> it
> is, before anything is shutdown so that someone can examine the
> coredump
> and figure out what failed.  Running around changing the state of the
> process has a very real chance of hiding what is going wrong.
> 
> Further your change requires that there be a place for io_uring to
> clean
> things up.  Given that fundamentally that seems like the wrong thing
> to
> me I am not interested in making it easy to what looks like the wrong
> thing.
> 
> All of this may be perfection being the enemy of the good (especially
> as
> your io_uring magic happens as a special case in do_coredump).  My
> work
> in this area is to remove hacks so I can be convinced the code works
> 100% of the time so unfortunately I am not interested in pick up a
> change that is only good enough.  Someone else like Andrew Morton
> might
> be.
> 
> 
Fair enough.

You do bring good points but I am not so sure about the second one
considering that the coredump is meant to be a snapshot and if io_uring
still runs, the state may change as the dump is generated anyway.

I'll follow with interest what you finally come up with but my mindset
when I wrote the patch was that there does not seem to be any benefit
keeping io_uring active while coredumping and it has the potential to
create nasty issues.

I did stumble into core file truncation problem.

Pavel got that when modifying io_uring code:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/1b519092-2ebf-3800-306d-c354c24a9ad1@gmail.com/

and I find very likely that keeping io_uring active while coredumping
might create new nasty but subtle issues down the road...

Greetings,
Olivier