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ptrace: partially fix the do_wait(WEXITED) vs EXIT_DEAD->EXIT_ZOMBIE …
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…race

Test-case:

	int main(void)
	{
		int pid, status;

		pid = fork();
		if (!pid) {
			for (;;) {
				if (!fork())
					return 0;
				if (waitpid(-1, &status, 0) < 0) {
					printf("ERR!! wait: %m\n");
					return 0;
				}
			}
		}

		assert(ptrace(PTRACE_ATTACH, pid, 0,0) == 0);
		assert(waitpid(-1, NULL, 0) == pid);

		assert(ptrace(PTRACE_SETOPTIONS, pid, 0,
					PTRACE_O_TRACEFORK) == 0);

		do {
			ptrace(PTRACE_CONT, pid, 0, 0);
			pid = waitpid(-1, NULL, 0);
		} while (pid > 0);

		return 1;
	}

It fails because ->real_parent sees its child in EXIT_DEAD state
while the tracer is going to change the state back to EXIT_ZOMBIE
in wait_task_zombie().

The offending commit is 823b018 which moved the EXIT_DEAD check,
but in fact we should not blame it. The original code was not
correct as well because it didn't take ptrace_reparented() into
account and because we can't really trust ->ptrace.

This patch adds the additional check to close this particular
race but it doesn't solve the whole problem. We simply can't
rely on ->ptrace in this case, it can be cleared if the tracer
is multithreaded by the exiting ->parent.

I think we should kill EXIT_DEAD altogether, we should always
remove the soon-to-be-reaped child from ->children or at least
we should never do the DEAD->ZOMBIE transition. But this is too
complex for 3.2.

Reported-and-tested-by: Denys Vlasenko <vda.linux@googlemail.com>
Tested-by: Lukasz Michalik <lmi@ift.uni.wroc.pl>
Acked-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>		[3.0+]
Signed-off-by: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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oleg-nesterov authored and torvalds committed Jan 4, 2012
1 parent 8d9cbf8 commit 50b8d25
Showing 1 changed file with 8 additions and 1 deletion.
9 changes: 8 additions & 1 deletion kernel/exit.c
Expand Up @@ -1540,8 +1540,15 @@ static int wait_consider_task(struct wait_opts *wo, int ptrace,
}

/* dead body doesn't have much to contribute */
if (p->exit_state == EXIT_DEAD)
if (unlikely(p->exit_state == EXIT_DEAD)) {
/*
* But do not ignore this task until the tracer does
* wait_task_zombie()->do_notify_parent().
*/
if (likely(!ptrace) && unlikely(ptrace_reparented(p)))
wo->notask_error = 0;
return 0;
}

/* slay zombie? */
if (p->exit_state == EXIT_ZOMBIE) {
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