Re: [PATCH] vfs: Fix possible NULL pointer dereference in inode_permission()

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 07:53:41AM +0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 10, 2014 at 7:37 AM, Eric Paris <eparis@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > but at least from an SELinux PoV, I think it's quick and easy, but wrong
> > for maintainability...
> 
> Yeah, it's a hack, and it's wrong, and we should figure out how to do
> it right. Likely we should just tie the lifetime of the i_security
> member directly to the lifetime of the inode itself, and just make the
> rule be that security_inode_free() gets called from whatever frees the
> inode itself, and *not* have an extra rcu callback etc. But that
> sounds like a bigger change than I'm comfy with right now, so the
> hacky one might be the band-aid to do for stable..
> 
> The problem, of course, is that all the different filesystems have
> their own inode allocations/freeing. Of course, they all tend to share
> the same pattern ("call_rcu xyz_i_callback"), so maybe we could try to
> make that a more generic thing? Like have a "free_inode" vfs callback,
> and do the call_rcu delaying at the VFS level..
> 
> And maybe, just maybe, we could just say that that is what
> "destroy_inode()" is, and that we will just call it from rcu context.
> All the IO has hopefully been done earlier  Yes/no?

Check what XFS is doing ;-/  That's where those call_rcu() have come from.
Sure, we can separate the simple "just do call_rcu(...->free_inode)" case
and hit it whenever full ->free_inode is there and ->destroy_inode isn't.
Not too pretty, but removal of tons of boilerplate might be worth doing
that anyway.  But ->destroy_inode() is still needed for cases where fs
has its own idea of inode lifetime rules.  Again, check what XFS is doing
in that area...

There's an extra source of headache, BTW - what about the "LSM stacking"
crowd and their plans?
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html




[Index of Archives]     [Linux Ext4 Filesystem]     [Union Filesystem]     [Filesystem Testing]     [Ceph Users]     [Ecryptfs]     [AutoFS]     [Kernel Newbies]     [Share Photos]     [Security]     [Netfilter]     [Bugtraq]     [Yosemite News]     [MIPS Linux]     [ARM Linux]     [Linux Security]     [Linux Cachefs]     [Reiser Filesystem]     [Linux RAID]     [Samba]     [Device Mapper]     [CEPH Development]
  Powered by Linux