On Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 01:48:19PM +0100, Dave P Martin wrote: > On Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 12:36:29PM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote: > > On Wed, Oct 04, 2017 at 12:32:07PM +0100, Dave P Martin wrote: > > [...] > > > > I don't think the hwcaps shouldn't change after entry to userspace, > > > so it really doesn't matter whether HWCAP_CPUID is set before or > > > after registration: for userspace it should all already have happened. > > > > Good point, I forgot about this. > > > > > It looks to me like all initcalls are called in the same kernel thread > > > that execs the initramfs init process, before the exec. > > > > > > So I still don't see how a built-in late initcall can not have been > > > called before entry to userspace. > > > > > > The patch seems to demonstrate that I'm wrong though. > > > What am I missing? > > > > I also wondered about this. I think is the kernel invoking modprobe > > before the actual init/linuxrc in an initrd. > > Ah, right. Could that be a bug, do you think? > > I wonder whether it's even well-defined how early that can happen. > i.e., which initcall level is guaranteed early enough to prevent this? I don't think it's a bug, probably just an undocumented convention. I don't know which module triggered this specific issue but, for example, I see the possibility of request_module in the ipv4 code only after fs_initcall(). Let's hope nothing executes user space prior to arch_initcall(). usermodehlper_enable() is called in do_basic_setup() prior to do_initcalls(), so there is always a chance of someone calling user space early. If we want some guarantee, maybe something like below: diff --git a/init/main.c b/init/main.c index 0ee9c6866ada..67040e570533 100644 --- a/init/main.c +++ b/init/main.c @@ -914,10 +914,16 @@ static void __init do_basic_setup(void) driver_init(); init_irq_proc(); do_ctors(); - usermodehelper_enable(); do_initcalls(); } +static int usermodehelper_init(void) +{ + usermodehelper_enable(); + return 0; +} +arch_initcall_sync(usermodehelper_init); + static void __init do_pre_smp_initcalls(void) { initcall_t *fn;