On Mon, Sep 03, 2012 at 06:05:38PM +0200, Oleg Nesterov wrote: > This is not easy to fix. ptrace_disable() and user_disable_single_step() > is arch dependant, but at least on x86 it assumes that the tracee is not > running, so exit_ptrace() can't do this. True (IOW, proposed fix is hopeless - we definitely want the detachees to be in kernel space, and not only on x86). > This is another reason to move enable/disable step into ptrace_stop(). > And in fact I had the patches a loong ago, but we need to cleanup > the usage of PT_SINGLESTEP/PT_BLOCKSTEP first. The tracer should > simply set/clear these PT_ flags and resume the tracee which should > check them and do user_*_single_step() in response. > > Related question: should execve(2) clear (ptrace-inflicted) > > singlestepping? > > Perhaps, but > > > Tracer > > exit(), however, does *not* do that right now, so the state after > > execve(2) is theoretically observable. > > ... why execve() is special? Because that behaviour had been changed over the history, for one thing: commit e1f287735c1e58c653b516931b5d3dd899edcb77 Author: Roland McGrath <roland@xxxxxxxxxx> Date: Wed Jan 30 13:30:50 2008 +0100 x86 single_step: TIF_FORCED_TF had done that for x86, unless I'm misreading something. BTW, now that I've looked at that, alpha seems to have a really unpleasant bug with single-stepping through execve() - it *must* reset ->bpt_nsaved to 0 in start_thread(), simply because the address space the breakpoints used to be in is gone at that point. I don't see any place where that would be done; suppose we single-step right into callsys insn and do PTRACE_CONT when stopped on the way out. Won't that end up with ptrace_cancel_bpt() done in *new* address space, silently buggering new .text contents? BTW, speaking of alpha, what about PTRACE_SINGLESTEP when the task is stopped on syscall entry/exit after previous PTRACE_SYSCALL, BTW? Looks like it will be like PTRACE_CONT until we hit the first signal, at which point it converts to singlesteping mode; unless I'm seriously misreading that code, we rely on ptrace_set_bpt() done shortly after returning from get_signal_to_deliver() if we found that we'd been singlestepping. Fine, but in this case we had been resumed *not* in get_signal_to_deliver()... Cc'd linux-alpha, in hopes to hear "you don't understand how single-stepping works on alpha, you idiot, everything's fine because of $REASONS"... -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-alpha" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html