From: Vladis Dronov <vdronov@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 27 Dec 2019 03:26:27 +0100
> In a case when a ptp chardev (like /dev/ptp0) is open but an underlying
> device is removed, closing this file leads to a race. This reproduces
> easily in a kvm virtual machine:
. ..
> This happens in:
>
> static void __fput(struct file *file)
> { ...
> if (file->f_op->release)
> file->f_op->release(inode, file); <<< cdev is kfree'd here
> if (unlikely(S_ISCHR(inode->i_mode) && inode->i_cdev != NULL &&
> !(mode & FMODE_PATH))) {
> cdev_put(inode->i_cdev); <<< cdev fields are accessed here
>
> Namely:
>
> __fput()
> posix_clock_release()
> kref_put(&clk->kref, delete_clock) <<< the last reference
> delete_clock()
> delete_ptp_clock()
> kfree(ptp) <<< cdev is embedded in ptp
> cdev_put
> module_put(p->owner) <<< *p is kfree'd, bang!
>
> Here cdev is embedded in posix_clock which is embedded in ptp_clock.
> The race happens because ptp_clock's lifetime is controlled by two
> refcounts: kref and cdev.kobj in posix_clock. This is wrong.
>
> Make ptp_clock's sysfs device a parent of cdev with cdev_device_add()
> created especially for such cases. This way the parent device with its
> ptp_clock is not released until all references to the cdev are released.
> This adds a requirement that an initialized but not exposed struct
> device should be provided to posix_clock_register() by a caller instead
> of a simple dev_t.
>
> This approach was adopted from the commit 72139dfa2464 ("watchdog: Fix
> the race between the release of watchdog_core_data and cdev"). See
> details of the implementation in the commit 233ed09d7fda ("chardev: add
> helper function to register char devs with a struct device").
>
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20191125125342.6189-1-vdronov@xxxxxxxxxx/T/#u
> Analyzed-by: Stephen Johnston <sjohnsto@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Analyzed-by: Vern Lovejoy <vlovejoy@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Vladis Dronov <vdronov@xxxxxxxxxx>
Applied, thanks.
