On 11/20/24 03:17, Song Chen wrote: > Hi Petr, > > 在 2024/11/18 20:54, Petr Pavlu 写道: >> On 11/13/24 03:15, Song Chen wrote: >>> 在 2024/11/12 20:56, Petr Pavlu 写道: >>>> On 11/10/24 12:42, Song Chen wrote: >>>>> Sometimes when kernel calls request_module to load a module >>>>> into kernel space, it doesn't pass the module name appropriately, >>>>> and request_module doesn't verify it as well. >>>>> >>>>> As a result, modprobe is invoked anyway and spend a lot of time >>>>> searching a nonsense name. >>>>> >>>>> For example reported from a customer, he runs a user space process >>>>> to call ioctl(fd, SIOCGIFINDEX, &ifr), the callstack in kernel is >>>>> like that: >>>>> dev_ioctl(net/core/dev_iovtl.c) >>>>> dev_load >>>>> request_module("netdev-%s", name); >>>>> or request_module("%s", name); >>>>> >>>>> However if name of NIC is empty, neither dev_load nor request_module >>>>> checks it at the first place, modprobe will search module "netdev-" >>>>> in its default path, env path and path configured in etc for nothing, >>>>> increase a lot system overhead. >>>>> >>>>> To address this problem, this patch copies va_list and introduces >>>>> a helper is_module_name_valid to verify the parameters validity >>>>> one by one, either null or empty. if it fails, no modprobe invoked. >>>> >>>> I'm not sure if I fully follow why this should be addressed at the >>>> request_module() level. If the user repeatedly invokes SIOCGIFINDEX with >>>> an empty name and this increases their system load, wouldn't it be >>>> better to update the userspace to prevent this non-sense request in the >>>> first place? >>> >>> If the user process knew, it wouldn't make the mistake. >> >> The user process should be able to check that the ifr_name passed to >> SIOCGIFINDEX is empty and avoid the syscall altogether, or am I missing >> something? Even if the kernel gets improved in some way to handle this >> case better, I would still suggest looking at what the application is >> doing and how it ends up making this call. >> > > yes, agree, it's the user space process's fault after all. > >>> moreover, what >>> happened in dev_load was quite confusing, please see the code below: >>> >>> no_module = !dev; >>> if (no_module && capable(CAP_NET_ADMIN)) >>> no_module = request_module("netdev-%s", name); >>> if (no_module && capable(CAP_SYS_MODULE)) >>> request_module("%s", name); >>> >>> Running the same process, sys admin or root user spends more time than >>> normal user, it took a while for us to find the cause, that's why i >>> tried to fix it in kernel. >>> >>> Similarly, if something should be done in the kernel, >>>> wouldn't it be more straightforward for dev_ioctl()/dev_load() to check >>>> this case? >>> >>> I thought about it at the beginning, not only dev_ioctl/dev_load but >>> also other request_module callers should check this case as well, that >>> would be too much effort, then I switched to check it at the beginning >>> of request_module which every caller goes through. >>> >>>> >>>> I think the same should in principle apply to other places that might >>>> invoke request_module() with "%s" and a bogus value. The callers can >>>> appropriately decide if their request makes sense and should be >>>> fixed/improved. >>>> >>> >>> Callees are obliged to do fault tolerance for callers, or at least let >>> them know what is going on inside, what kinds of mistake they are >>> making, there are a lot of such cases in kernel, such as call_modprobe >>> in kernel/module/kmod.c, it checks if orig_module_name is NULL. >> >> Ok, I see the idea behind checking that a value passed to >> request_module() to format "%s" is non-NULL. >> >> I'm however not sure about rejecting empty strings as is also done by >> the patch. Consider a call to request_module("mod%s", suffix) where the >> suffix could be empty to select the default variant, or non-empty to >> select e.g. some optimized version of the module. Only the caller knows >> if the suffix being empty is valid or not. >> >> I've checked if this pattern is currently used in the kernel and wasn't >> able to find anything, so that is good. However, I'm not sure if >> request_module() should flat-out reject this use. >> > > I accidentally found another problem in request_module when i was > testing this patch again, if the caller just passes a empty pointer to > request_module, like request_module(NULL), the process will be broken: > > [ 2.336160] ? asm_exc_page_fault+0x2b/0x30 > [ 2.336160] ? __pfx_crc64_rocksoft_notify+0x10/0x10 > [ 2.336160] ? vsnprintf+0x5a/0x4f0 > [ 2.336160] __request_module+0x93/0x2b0 > [ 2.336160] ? __pfx_crc64_rocksoft_notify+0x10/0x10 > [ 2.336160] ? notifier_call_chain+0x65/0xd0 > [ 2.336160] ? __pfx_crc64_rocksoft_notify+0x10/0x10 > [ 2.336160] crypto_probing_notify+0x43/0x60 > > (please ignore the caller, that is a testing code.) > > I searched kernel code if this patter exists, and found in > __trace_bprintk of kernel/trace/trace_printk.c, it checks fmt at the > beginning of the function: > > va_list ap; > > if (unlikely(!fmt)) > return 0; > > Therefore, i would like to suggest we should at least add this check in > request_module too. In that sense, why don't we do a little further to > verify every parameter's validity to provide better fault tolerance, > besides, it costs almost nothing. > > If you like this idea, i will send a v2. I don't have much of a preference. It can be added, but on the other hand I think it isn't really necessary. Most functions with format arguments in the kernel don't perform this type of checking as far as I can see. -- Thanks, Petr