Re: [PATCH] spi: bcm2835: do not unregister controller in shutdown handler

From: Mark Brown
Date: Fri Oct 01 2021 - 13:55:15 EST


On Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 09:56:57PM +0200, Lino Sanfilippo wrote:

> One example is if the BCM2835 driver is used together with the TPM SPI
> driver:
> At system shutdown first the TPM chip devices (pre) shutdown handler
> (tpm_class_shutdown) is called, stopping the chip and setting an operations
> pointer to NULL.
> Then since the BCM2835 shutdown handler unregisters the SPI controller the
> TPM SPI remove function (tpm_tis_spi_remove) is also called. In case of
> TPM 2 this function accesses the now nullified operations pointer,
> resulting in the following NULL pointer access:

This is a bug in that driver, it should be able to cope with a race
between a removal (which might be triggered for some other reason) and a
shutdown. Obviously this is actively triggered by this code path but it
could happen via some other mechanism.

> The first attempt to fix this was with an extra check in the tpm chip
> driver (see https://marc.info/?l=linux-integrity&m=163129718414118&w=2) to
> avoid the NULL pointer access.
> Then Jason Gunthorpe noted that the real issue was the BCM driver
> unregistering the chip in the shutdown handler(see
> https://marc.info/?l=linux-integrity&m=163129718414118&w=2) which led
> me to this solution.

Whatever happens here you should still fix the driver.

> -static int bcm2835_spi_remove(struct platform_device *pdev)
> +static void bcm2835_spi_shutdown(struct platform_device *pdev)
> {
> struct spi_controller *ctlr = platform_get_drvdata(pdev);
> struct bcm2835_spi *bs = spi_controller_get_devdata(ctlr);
>
> - bcm2835_debugfs_remove(bs);
> -
> - spi_unregister_controller(ctlr);
> -
> bcm2835_dma_release(ctlr, bs);

It is not at all clear to me that it is safe to deallocate the DMA
resources the controller is using without first releasing the
controller, I don't see what's stopping something coming along and
submitting new transactions which could in turn try to start doing
DMA.

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