Commit e717abc5 authored by Michal Hocko's avatar Michal Hocko Committed by Ben Hutchings

kernel/fork: fix CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID regression in nscd

commit 735f2770 upstream.

Commit fec1d011 ("[PATCH] Disable CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID for abnormal
exit") has caused a subtle regression in nscd which uses
CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID to clear the nscd_certainly_running flag in the
shared databases, so that the clients are notified when nscd is
restarted.  Now, when nscd uses a non-persistent database, clients that
have it mapped keep thinking the database is being updated by nscd, when
in fact nscd has created a new (anonymous) one (for non-persistent
databases it uses an unlinked file as backend).

The original proposal for the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID change claimed
(https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/25/233):

: The NPTL library uses the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID flag on clone() syscalls
: on behalf of pthread_create() library calls.  This feature is used to
: request that the kernel clear the thread-id in user space (at an address
: provided in the syscall) when the thread disassociates itself from the
: address space, which is done in mm_release().
:
: Unfortunately, when a multi-threaded process incurs a core dump (such as
: from a SIGSEGV), the core-dumping thread sends SIGKILL signals to all of
: the other threads, which then proceed to clear their user-space tids
: before synchronizing in exit_mm() with the start of core dumping.  This
: misrepresents the state of process's address space at the time of the
: SIGSEGV and makes it more difficult for someone to debug NPTL and glibc
: problems (misleading him/her to conclude that the threads had gone away
: before the fault).
:
: The fix below is to simply avoid the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID action if a
: core dump has been initiated.

The resulting patch from Roland (https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/26/269)
seems to have a larger scope than the original patch asked for.  It
seems that limitting the scope of the check to core dumping should work
for SIGSEGV issue describe above.

[Changelog partly based on Andreas' description]
Fixes: fec1d011 ("[PATCH] Disable CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID for abnormal exit")
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1471968749-26173-1-git-send-email-mhocko@kernel.orgSigned-off-by: default avatarMichal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Tested-by: default avatarWilliam Preston <wpreston@suse.com>
Acked-by: default avatarOleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Roland McGrath <roland@hack.frob.com>
Cc: Andreas Schwab <schwab@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: default avatarBen Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>
parent 9e2c5a54
......@@ -777,14 +777,12 @@ void mm_release(struct task_struct *tsk, struct mm_struct *mm)
deactivate_mm(tsk, mm);
/*
* If we're exiting normally, clear a user-space tid field if
* requested. We leave this alone when dying by signal, to leave
* the value intact in a core dump, and to save the unnecessary
* trouble, say, a killed vfork parent shouldn't touch this mm.
* Userland only wants this done for a sys_exit.
* Signal userspace if we're not exiting with a core dump
* because we want to leave the value intact for debugging
* purposes.
*/
if (tsk->clear_child_tid) {
if (!(tsk->flags & PF_SIGNALED) &&
if (!(tsk->signal->flags & SIGNAL_GROUP_COREDUMP) &&
atomic_read(&mm->mm_users) > 1) {
/*
* We don't check the error code - if userspace has
......
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