Re: [PATCH 2/2] fix sys_unshare()+SEM_UNDO: perform an implicit CLONE_SYSVSEMin CLONE_NEWIPC

From: Manfred Spraul
Date: Mon Apr 14 2008 - 14:40:33 EST


Serge E. Hallyn wrote:
Quoting Manfred Spraul (manfred@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx):
sys_unshare(CLONE_NEWIPC) doesn't handle the undo lists properly, this can
cause a kernel memory corruption. CLONE_NEWIPC must detach from the existing
undo lists.
Fix, part 2: perform an implicit CLONE_SYSVSEM in CLONE_NEWIPC.
CLONE_NEWIPC creates a new IPC namespace, the task cannot access the
existing semaphore arrays after the unshare syscall. Thus the task
can/must detach from the existing undo list entries, too.

This fixes the kernel corruption, because it makes it impossible that
undo records from two different namespaces are in sysvsem.undo_list.

So this was never an issue with clone(CLONE_NEWIPC|CLONE_SYSVSEM), which
should have had the same result as unshare(CLONE_NEWIPC&~CLONE_SYSVSEM)?

Actually, the story is slightly different:
unshare(CLONE_NEWIPC|CLONE_SYSVSEM) returns -EINVAL right now.

Thus all apps right now call unshare(CLONE_NEWIPC|&~CLONE_SYSVSEM).
This combination doesn't make much sense. Even worse - it easily causes a kernel oops.
Thus my fix is twofold:
- add support for unshare(CLONE_SYSVSEM).
- implicitely add CLONE_SYSVSEM to all calls that set CLONE_NEWIPC.

It's not really pretty: If a pivot_namespace syscall is ever added, then CLONE_NEWIPC&~CLONE_SYSVSEM would make sense again.
What do you think? Can we break backward compatibility and add
if ( (unshare_flags & CLONE_NEWIPC) && !(unshare_flags & CLONE_SYSVSEM) )
return -EINVAL;
into sys_unshare()?
I have decided against that, it breaks the current ABI.
And we gain virtually nothing - most if not all unshare users will be single threaded apps that do not use sysvsem at all, and even most sysvsem users do not use SEM_UNDO.

--
Manfred
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