This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled tty: pty: Fix ldisc flush after userspace become aware of the data already 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: tty-pty-fix-ldisc-flush-after-userspace-become-aware-of-the-data-already.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 77dae6134440420bac334581a3ccee94cee1c054 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Wang YanQing <udknight@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2017 19:37:08 +0800 Subject: tty: pty: Fix ldisc flush after userspace become aware of the data already From: Wang YanQing <udknight@xxxxxxxxx> commit 77dae6134440420bac334581a3ccee94cee1c054 upstream. While using emacs, cat or others' commands in konsole with recent kernels, I have met many times that CTRL-C freeze konsole. After konsole freeze I can't type anything, then I have to open a new one, it is very annoying. See bug report: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=175283 The platform in that bug report is Solaris, but now the pty in linux has the same problem or the same behavior as Solaris :) It has high possibility to trigger the problem follow steps below: Note: In my test, BigFile is a text file whose size is bigger than 1G 1:open konsole 1:cat BigFile 2:CTRL-C After some digging, I find out the reason is that commit 1d1d14da12e7 ("pty: Fix buffer flush deadlock") changes the behavior of pty_flush_buffer. Thread A Thread B -------- -------- 1:n_tty_poll return POLLIN 2:CTRL-C trigger pty_flush_buffer tty_buffer_flush n_tty_flush_buffer 3:attempt to check count of chars: ioctl(fd, TIOCINQ, &available) available is equal to 0 4:read(fd, buffer, avaiable) return 0 5:konsole close fd Yes, I know we could use the same patch included in the BUG report as a workaround for linux platform too. But I think the data in ldisc is belong to application of another side, we shouldn't clear it when we want to flush write buffer of this side in pty_flush_buffer. So I think it is better to disable ldisc flush in pty_flush_buffer, because its new hehavior bring no benefit except that it mess up the behavior between POLLIN, and TIOCINQ or FIONREAD. Also I find no flush_buffer function in others' tty driver has the same behavior as current pty_flush_buffer. Fixes: 1d1d14da12e7 ("pty: Fix buffer flush deadlock") Signed-off-by: Wang YanQing <udknight@xxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- drivers/tty/pty.c | 7 +------ 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 6 deletions(-) --- a/drivers/tty/pty.c +++ b/drivers/tty/pty.c @@ -216,16 +216,11 @@ static int pty_signal(struct tty_struct static void pty_flush_buffer(struct tty_struct *tty) { struct tty_struct *to = tty->link; - struct tty_ldisc *ld; if (!to) return; - ld = tty_ldisc_ref(to); - tty_buffer_flush(to, ld); - if (ld) - tty_ldisc_deref(ld); - + tty_buffer_flush(to, NULL); if (to->packet) { spin_lock_irq(&tty->ctrl_lock); tty->ctrl_status |= TIOCPKT_FLUSHWRITE; Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from udknight@xxxxxxxxx are queue-4.4/tty-pty-fix-ldisc-flush-after-userspace-become-aware-of-the-data-already.patch