On 12/16/2019 1:17 PM, James Bottomley wrote:
On Mon, 2019-12-16 at 11:20 -0800, Lakshmi Ramasubramanian wrote:
=> If the flag is false, mutex is taken and the flag is checked
again. If the flag changed from false to true between the above two
tests, that means another thread had raced to call
ima_process_queued_keys() and has processed the queued keys. So
again, no further action is required.
This is the problem: in the race case you may still be adding keys to
the queue after the other thread has processed it. Those keys won't get
processed because the flag is now false in the post check so the
current thread won't process them either.
James
I am not sure how a key could get added to the queue after another
thread has processed the queued keys.
The flag changes from false to true only once - in
ima_process_queued_keys(). This change is done under the lock. The
thread that makes this change will process all the queued keys.
Once the above change is done, ima_process_keys flag will never become
false again.
Another thread that is trying to queue the key will wait on the mutex -
in ima_queue_key(). If this thread finds the flag is true after taking
the mutex, it will NOT queue the key.
Please see my explanation below:
"READER" functions: ima_post_key_create_or_update() and ima_queue_key()
***********************************************************************
In ima_post_key_create_or_update() the flag is checked first without the
mutex taken:
=> If the flag is true, then there is no need to queue the key and it
can be processed immediately.
This condition means that either queued keys have already been
processed OR there is another thread in the middle of processing queued
keys. In both these conditions, the new key should NOT be queued, but
processed immediately.
=> If the flag is false, ima_queue_key() is called. In this function,
the mutex is taken and flag checked again.
Say, the flag changed from false to true at this point, the key will NOT
be queued. ima_queue_key() will return false and in response
ima_post_key_create_or_update() will process the key immediately.
But if the flag is still false, the key will be queued by
ima_queue_key() and will be processed later.
