Andrey Vagin <avagin@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Lets look at destroy_conntrack: > > hlist_nulls_del_rcu(&ct->tuplehash[IP_CT_DIR_ORIGINAL].hnnode); > ... > nf_conntrack_free(ct) > kmem_cache_free(net->ct.nf_conntrack_cachep, ct); > > The hash is protected by rcu, so readers look up conntracks without > locks. > A conntrack is removed from the hash, but in this moment a few readers > still can use the conntrack, so if we call kmem_cache_free now, all > readers will read released object. > > Bellow you can find more tricky race condition of three tasks. > > task 1 task 2 task 3 > nf_conntrack_find_get > ____nf_conntrack_find > destroy_conntrack > hlist_nulls_del_rcu > nf_conntrack_free > kmem_cache_free > __nf_conntrack_alloc > kmem_cache_alloc > memset(&ct->tuplehash[IP_CT_DIR_MAX], > if (nf_ct_is_dying(ct)) > > In this case the task 2 will not understand, that it uses a wrong > conntrack. Can you elaborate? Yes, nf_ct_is_dying(ct) might be called for the wrong conntrack. But, in case we _think_ that its the right one we call nf_ct_tuple_equal() to verify we indeed found the right one: h = ____nf_conntrack_find(net, zone, tuple, hash); if (h) { // might be released right now, but page won't go away (SLAB_BY_RCU) ct = nf_ct_tuplehash_to_ctrack(h); if (unlikely(nf_ct_is_dying(ct) || !atomic_inc_not_zero(&ct->ct_general.use))) // which means we should hit this path (0 ref). h = NULL; else { // otherwise, it cannot go away from under us, since // we own a reference now. if (unlikely(!nf_ct_tuple_equal(tuple, &h->tuple) || nf_ct_zone(ct) != zone)) { // if we get here, the entry got recycled on other cpu // for a different tuple, we can bail out and drop // the reference safely and re-try the lookup nf_ct_put(ct); goto begin; } } -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netfilter-devel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html