linux-kernel - Strange EFAULT on mips64el returned by syscall when another thread is forking

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Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2024 18:42:30 +0800
From: Xi Ruoyao <xry111@...111.site>
To: linux-mips@...r.kernel.org
Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Jiaxun Yang <jiaxun.yang@...goat.com>, 
	Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@...ha.franken.de>, libc-alpha@...rceware.org
Subject: Strange EFAULT on mips64el returned by syscall when another thread
 is forking

Hi,

When I'm testing Glibc master branch for upcoming 2.39 release, I
noticed an alarming test failure on mips64el:

FAIL: stdlib/tst-arc4random-thread

I've gathered some info about it and pasted my findings into
https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/Testing/Tests/stdlib/tst-arc4random-thread.

Finally I was able to reduce the test case into:

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <fcntl.h>

void *
test_thread (void *)
{
  char buf[16] = {};
  int fd = open("/dev/zero", O_RDONLY);
  while (1)
    {
      ssize_t ret = read (fd, buf, 7);
      if (ret == -1 && errno == EFAULT)
	abort ();
    }
}

void *
fork_thread (void *)
{
  while (1)
    {
      if (!fork ())
	_exit (0);
    }
}

int
main (void)
{
  pthread_t test_th;
  pthread_t fork_th;

  pthread_create (&test_th, NULL, test_thread, NULL);
  pthread_create (&fork_th, NULL, fork_thread, NULL);
  pthread_join (test_th, NULL);
  pthread_join (fork_th, NULL);
}

When running this on the mainline kernel (revision 6.8.0-rc1+-
g7ed2632ec7d72e926b9e8bcc9ad1bb0cd37274bf) it fails in milliseconds. 
Some "interesting" aspects:

1. This is related to the size parameter passed to read ().  When it's
less than 8 it fails, but when it's 8 or greater there is no failure.
2. This is not related to if "buf" is initialized or not.

Now I'm suspecting this might be a kernel bug.  Any pointer to further
triage?

-- 
Xi Ruoyao <xry111@...111.site>
School of Aerospace Science and Technology, Xidian University