On Sun, Mar 1, 2020 at 12:27 PM Bernd Edlinger <bernd.edlinger@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > The proposed solution is to have a second mutex that is > used in mm_access, so it is allowed to continue while the > dying threads are not yet terminated. Just for context: When I proposed something similar back in 2016, https://lore.kernel.org/linux-fsdevel/20161102181806.GB1112@xxxxxxxxxx/ was the resulting discussion thread. At least back then, I looked through the various existing users of cred_guard_mutex, and the only places that couldn't be converted to the new second mutex were PTRACE_ATTACH and SECCOMP_FILTER_FLAG_TSYNC. The ideal solution would IMO be something like this: Decide what the new task's credentials should be *before* reaching de_thread(), install them into a second cred* on the task (together with the new dumpability), drop the cred_guard_mutex, and let ptrace_may_access() check against both. After that, some further restructuring might even allow the cred_guard_mutex to not be held across all of the VFS operations that happen early on in execve, which may block indefinitely. But that would be pretty complicated, so I think your proposed solution makes sense for now, given that nobody has managed to implement anything better in the last few years.