kmod: avoid deadlock from recursive kmod call

The system deadlocks (at least since 2.6.10) when
call_usermodehelper(UMH_WAIT_EXEC) request triggers
call_usermodehelper(UMH_WAIT_PROC) request.

This is because "khelper thread is waiting for the worker thread at
wait_for_completion() in do_fork() since the worker thread was created
with CLONE_VFORK flag" and "the worker thread cannot call complete()
because do_execve() is blocked at UMH_WAIT_PROC request" and "the khelper
thread cannot start processing UMH_WAIT_PROC request because the khelper
thread is waiting for the worker thread at wait_for_completion() in
do_fork()".

The easiest example to observe this deadlock is to use a corrupted
/sbin/hotplug binary (like shown below).

  # : > /tmp/dummy
  # chmod 755 /tmp/dummy
  # echo /tmp/dummy > /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug
  # modprobe whatever

call_usermodehelper("/tmp/dummy", UMH_WAIT_EXEC) is called from
kobject_uevent_env() in lib/kobject_uevent.c upon loading/unloading a
module.  do_execve("/tmp/dummy") triggers a call to
request_module("binfmt-0000") from search_binary_handler() which in turn
calls call_usermodehelper(UMH_WAIT_PROC).

In order to avoid deadlock, as a for-now and easy-to-backport solution, do
not try to call wait_for_completion() in call_usermodehelper_exec() if the
worker thread was created by khelper thread with CLONE_VFORK flag.  Future
and fundamental solution might be replacing singleton khelper thread with
some workqueue so that recursive calls up to max_active dependency loop
can be handled without deadlock.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: add comment to kmod_thread_locker]
Signed-off-by: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp>
Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Acked-by: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions