The patch titled Subject: kthread: make it clear that kthread_create_on_node() might be terminated by any fatal signal has been added to the -mm tree. Its filename is kthread-make-it-clear-that-kthread_create_on_node-might-be-terminated-by-any-fatal-signal.patch This patch should soon appear at https://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmots/broken-out/kthread-make-it-clear-that-kthread_create_on_node-might-be-terminated-by-any-fatal-signal.patch and later at https://ozlabs.org/~akpm/mmotm/broken-out/kthread-make-it-clear-that-kthread_create_on_node-might-be-terminated-by-any-fatal-signal.patch Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's *** Remember to use Documentation/process/submit-checklist.rst when testing your code *** The -mm tree is included into linux-next and is updated there every 3-4 working days ------------------------------------------------------ From: Petr Mladek <pmladek@xxxxxxxx> Subject: kthread: make it clear that kthread_create_on_node() might be terminated by any fatal signal The comments in kernel/kthread.c create a feeling that only SIGKILL is able to terminate the creation of kernel kthreads by kthread_create()/_on_node()/_on_cpu() APIs. In reality, wait_for_completion_killable() might be killed by any fatal signal that does not have a custom handler: (!siginmask(signr, SIG_KERNEL_IGNORE_MASK|SIG_KERNEL_STOP_MASK) && \ (t)->sighand->action[(signr)-1].sa.sa_handler == SIG_DFL) static inline void signal_wake_up(struct task_struct *t, bool resume) { signal_wake_up_state(t, resume ? TASK_WAKEKILL : 0); } static void complete_signal(int sig, struct task_struct *p, enum pid_type type) { [...] /* * Found a killable thread. If the signal will be fatal, * then start taking the whole group down immediately. */ if (sig_fatal(p, sig) ...) { if (!sig_kernel_coredump(sig)) { [...] do { task_clear_jobctl_pending(t, JOBCTL_PENDING_MASK); sigaddset(&t->pending.signal, SIGKILL); signal_wake_up(t, 1); } while_each_thread(p, t); return; } } } Update the comments in kernel/kthread.c to make this more obvious. The motivation for this change was debugging why a module initialization failed. The module was being loaded from initrd. It "magically" failed when systemd was switching to the real root. The clean up operations sent SIGTERM to various pending processed that were started from initrd. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220315102444.2380-1-pmladek@xxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@xxxxxxxx> Reviewed-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Marco Elver <elver@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/kthread.c | 14 +++++++------- 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-) --- a/kernel/kthread.c~kthread-make-it-clear-that-kthread_create_on_node-might-be-terminated-by-any-fatal-signal +++ a/kernel/kthread.c @@ -341,7 +341,7 @@ static int kthread(void *_create) self = to_kthread(current); - /* If user was SIGKILLed, I release the structure. */ + /* Release the structure when caller killed by a fatal signal. */ done = xchg(&create->done, NULL); if (!done) { kfree(create); @@ -399,7 +399,7 @@ static void create_kthread(struct kthrea /* We want our own signal handler (we take no signals by default). */ pid = kernel_thread(kthread, create, CLONE_FS | CLONE_FILES | SIGCHLD); if (pid < 0) { - /* If user was SIGKILLed, I release the structure. */ + /* Release the structure when caller killed by a fatal signal. */ struct completion *done = xchg(&create->done, NULL); if (!done) { @@ -441,9 +441,9 @@ struct task_struct *__kthread_create_on_ */ if (unlikely(wait_for_completion_killable(&done))) { /* - * If I was SIGKILLed before kthreadd (or new kernel thread) - * calls complete(), leave the cleanup of this structure to - * that thread. + * If I was killed by a fatal signal before kthreadd (or new + * kernel thread) calls complete(), leave the cleanup of this + * structure to that thread. */ if (xchg(&create->done, NULL)) return ERR_PTR(-EINTR); @@ -877,7 +877,7 @@ fail_task: * * Returns a pointer to the allocated worker on success, ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) * when the needed structures could not get allocated, and ERR_PTR(-EINTR) - * when the worker was SIGKILLed. + * when the caller was killed by a fatal signal. */ struct kthread_worker * kthread_create_worker(unsigned int flags, const char namefmt[], ...) @@ -926,7 +926,7 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(kthread_create_worker); * Return: * The pointer to the allocated worker on success, ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM) * when the needed structures could not get allocated, and ERR_PTR(-EINTR) - * when the worker was SIGKILLed. + * when the caller was killed by a fatal signal. */ struct kthread_worker * kthread_create_worker_on_cpu(int cpu, unsigned int flags, _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from pmladek@xxxxxxxx are kthread-make-it-clear-that-kthread_create_on_node-might-be-terminated-by-any-fatal-signal.patch