On Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 06:52:56PM +0100, Jann Horn wrote: > We must prevent the CPU from reordering the files->count read with the > FD table access like this, on architectures where read-read reordering is > possible: > > files_lookup_fd_raw() > close_fd() > put_files_struct() > atomic_read(&files->count) > > I would like to mark this for stable, but the stable rules explicitly say > "no theoretical races", and given that the FD table pointer and > files->count are explicitly stored in the same cacheline, this sort of > reordering seems quite unlikely in practice... Looks sane, but looking at the definition of atomic_read_acquire... ouch. static __always_inline int atomic_read_acquire(const atomic_t *v) { instrument_atomic_read(v, sizeof(*v)); return arch_atomic_read_acquire(v); } OK... ; git grep -n -w arch_atomic_read_acquire include/linux/atomic/atomic-arch-fallback.h:220:#ifndef arch_atomic_read_acquire include/linux/atomic/atomic-arch-fallback.h:222:arch_atomic_read_acquire(const atomic_t *v) include/linux/atomic/atomic-arch-fallback.h:235:#define arch_atomic_read_acquire arch_atomic_read_acquire include/linux/atomic/atomic-instrumented.h:35: return arch_atomic_read_acquire(v); include/linux/atomic/atomic-long.h:529: return arch_atomic_read_acquire(v); No arch-specific instances, so... static __always_inline int arch_atomic_read_acquire(const atomic_t *v) { int ret; if (__native_word(atomic_t)) { ret = smp_load_acquire(&(v)->counter); } else { ret = arch_atomic_read(v); __atomic_acquire_fence(); } return ret; } OK, but when would that test not be true? We have unconditional typedef struct { int counter; } atomic_t; and #define __native_word(t) \ (sizeof(t) == sizeof(char) || sizeof(t) == sizeof(short) || \ sizeof(t) == sizeof(int) || sizeof(t) == sizeof(long)) Do we really have any architectures where a structure with one int field does *not* have a size that would satisfy that check? Is it future-proofing for masturbation sake, or am I missing something real here?