On 03/18/2014 12:55 PM, Michal Hocko wrote: > On Tue 18-03-14 12:14:37, Vladimir Davydov wrote: >> On 03/17/2014 08:07 PM, Michal Hocko wrote: >>> On Thu 13-03-14 19:06:39, Vladimir Davydov wrote: >>>> When we get to memcg cache destruction, either from the root cache >>>> destruction path or when turning memcg offline, there still might be >>>> memcg cache creation works pending that was scheduled before we >>>> initiated destruction. We need to flush them before starting to destroy >>>> memcg caches, otherwise we can get a leaked kmem cache or, even worse, >>>> an attempt to use after free. >>> How can we use-after-free? Even if there is a pending work item to >>> create a new cache then we keep the css reference for the memcg and >>> release it from the worker (memcg_create_cache_work_func). So although >>> this can race with memcg offlining the memcg itself will be still alive. >> There are actually two issues: >> >> 1) When we destroy a root cache using kmem_cache_destroy(), we should >> ensure all pending memcg creation works for this root cache are over, >> otherwise a work could be executed after the root cache is destroyed >> resulting in use-after-free. > Dunno, but this sounds backwards to me. If we are using a root cache for > a new child creation then the child should make sure that the root > doesn't go away, no? Cannot we take a reference to the root cache before > we schedule memcg_create_cache_work_func? Yeah, that would work of course. We already have kmem_cache::refcount, which is currently used for alias handling, and I guess we could reuse it here. We would only have to make it atomic, because we can't take the slab_mutex in memcg_kmem_get_cache(), but it shouldn't be a problem. > But I admit that the root cache concept is not entirely clear to me. > >> 2) Memcg offline. In this case use-after-free is impossible in a memcg >> creation work handler, because, as you mentioned, the work holds the css >> reference. However, we still have to synchronize against pending >> requests, otherwise a work handler can be executed after we destroyed >> the caches corresponding to the memcg being offlined resulting in a >> kmem_cache leak. > If that is a case then we should come up with a proper synchronization > because synchronization by workqueues and explicit flushing and > canceling is really bad. Would be something like this suitable as proper synchronization: mem_cgroup_destroy_all_caches(): /* currently we don't take the slab_mutex here, * so we'd have to add this line */ take slab_mutex mark the memcg dead schedule the memcg's caches destruction release slab_mutex kmem_cache_create_memcg(): take slab_mutex if memcg is not dead, then create a cache release slab_mutex ? Thanks. -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@xxxxxxxxx"> email@xxxxxxxxx </a>