This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled netlink: disable IRQs for netlink_lock_table() to the 4.9-stable tree which can be found at: http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary The filename of the patch is: netlink-disable-irqs-for-netlink_lock_table.patch and it can be found in the queue-4.9 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. commit 58d484858a9e6c4ad660c320ed6390f2a5eae0cf Author: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Mon May 17 16:38:09 2021 +0200 netlink: disable IRQs for netlink_lock_table() [ Upstream commit 1d482e666b8e74c7555dbdfbfb77205eeed3ff2d ] Syzbot reports that in mac80211 we have a potential deadlock between our "local->stop_queue_reasons_lock" (spinlock) and netlink's nl_table_lock (rwlock). This is because there's at least one situation in which we might try to send a netlink message with this spinlock held while it is also possible to take the spinlock from a hardirq context, resulting in the following deadlock scenario reported by lockdep: CPU0 CPU1 ---- ---- lock(nl_table_lock); local_irq_disable(); lock(&local->queue_stop_reason_lock); lock(nl_table_lock); <Interrupt> lock(&local->queue_stop_reason_lock); This seems valid, we can take the queue_stop_reason_lock in any kind of context ("CPU0"), and call ieee80211_report_ack_skb() with the spinlock held and IRQs disabled ("CPU1") in some code path (ieee80211_do_stop() via ieee80211_free_txskb()). Short of disallowing netlink use in scenarios like these (which would be rather complex in mac80211's case due to the deep callchain), it seems the only fix for this is to disable IRQs while nl_table_lock is held to avoid hitting this scenario, this disallows the "CPU0" portion of the reported deadlock. Note that the writer side (netlink_table_grab()) already disables IRQs for this lock. Unfortunately though, this seems like a huge hammer, and maybe the whole netlink table locking should be reworked. Reported-by: syzbot+69ff9dff50dcfe14ddd4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@xxxxxxxxxx> diff --git a/net/netlink/af_netlink.c b/net/netlink/af_netlink.c index 205865292ba3..541410f1c3b7 100644 --- a/net/netlink/af_netlink.c +++ b/net/netlink/af_netlink.c @@ -436,11 +436,13 @@ void netlink_table_ungrab(void) static inline void netlink_lock_table(void) { + unsigned long flags; + /* read_lock() synchronizes us to netlink_table_grab */ - read_lock(&nl_table_lock); + read_lock_irqsave(&nl_table_lock, flags); atomic_inc(&nl_table_users); - read_unlock(&nl_table_lock); + read_unlock_irqrestore(&nl_table_lock, flags); } static inline void