This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled padata: avoid race in reordering to the 4.4-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: padata-avoid-race-in-reordering.patch and it can be found in the queue-4.4 subdirectory. If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> know about it. >From de5540d088fe97ad583cc7d396586437b32149a5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: "Jason A. Donenfeld" <Jason@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2017 12:24:43 +0100 Subject: padata: avoid race in reordering From: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx> commit de5540d088fe97ad583cc7d396586437b32149a5 upstream. Under extremely heavy uses of padata, crashes occur, and with list debugging turned on, this happens instead: [87487.298728] WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 882 at lib/list_debug.c:33 __list_add+0xae/0x130 [87487.301868] list_add corruption. prev->next should be next (ffffb17abfc043d0), but was ffff8dba70872c80. (prev=ffff8dba70872b00). [87487.339011] [<ffffffff9a53d075>] dump_stack+0x68/0xa3 [87487.342198] [<ffffffff99e119a1>] ? console_unlock+0x281/0x6d0 [87487.345364] [<ffffffff99d6b91f>] __warn+0xff/0x140 [87487.348513] [<ffffffff99d6b9aa>] warn_slowpath_fmt+0x4a/0x50 [87487.351659] [<ffffffff9a58b5de>] __list_add+0xae/0x130 [87487.354772] [<ffffffff9add5094>] ? _raw_spin_lock+0x64/0x70 [87487.357915] [<ffffffff99eefd66>] padata_reorder+0x1e6/0x420 [87487.361084] [<ffffffff99ef0055>] padata_do_serial+0xa5/0x120 padata_reorder calls list_add_tail with the list to which its adding locked, which seems correct: spin_lock(&squeue->serial.lock); list_add_tail(&padata->list, &squeue->serial.list); spin_unlock(&squeue->serial.lock); This therefore leaves only place where such inconsistency could occur: if padata->list is added at the same time on two different threads. This pdata pointer comes from the function call to padata_get_next(pd), which has in it the following block: next_queue = per_cpu_ptr(pd->pqueue, cpu); padata = NULL; reorder = &next_queue->reorder; if (!list_empty(&reorder->list)) { padata = list_entry(reorder->list.next, struct padata_priv, list); spin_lock(&reorder->lock); list_del_init(&padata->list); atomic_dec(&pd->reorder_objects); spin_unlock(&reorder->lock); pd->processed++; goto out; } out: return padata; I strongly suspect that the problem here is that two threads can race on reorder list. Even though the deletion is locked, call to list_entry is not locked, which means it's feasible that two threads pick up the same padata object and subsequently call list_add_tail on them at the same time. The fix is thus be hoist that lock outside of that block. Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@xxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Steffen Klassert <steffen.klassert@xxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Herbert Xu <herbert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- kernel/padata.c | 5 +++-- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) --- a/kernel/padata.c +++ b/kernel/padata.c @@ -189,19 +189,20 @@ static struct padata_priv *padata_get_ne reorder = &next_queue->reorder; + spin_lock(&reorder->lock); if (!list_empty(&reorder->list)) { padata = list_entry(reorder->list.next, struct padata_priv, list); - spin_lock(&reorder->lock); list_del_init(&padata->list); atomic_dec(&pd->reorder_objects); - spin_unlock(&reorder->lock); pd->processed++; + spin_unlock(&reorder->lock); goto out; } + spin_unlock(&reorder->lock); if (__this_cpu_read(pd->pqueue->cpu_index) == next_queue->cpu_index) { padata = ERR_PTR(-ENODATA); Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from Jason@xxxxxxxxx are queue-4.4/padata-avoid-race-in-reordering.patch