linux-phytec-ti

epoll: prevent creating circular epoll structures

In several places, an epoll fd can call another file's ->f_op->poll()
method with ep->mtx held.  This is in general unsafe, because that other
file could itself be an epoll fd that contains the original epoll fd.

The code defends against this possibility in its own ->poll() method using
ep_call_nested, but there are several other unsafe calls to ->poll
elsewhere that can be made to deadlock.  For example, the following simple
program causes the call in ep_insert recursively call the original fd's
->poll, leading to deadlock:

 #include <unistd.h>
 #include <sys/epoll.h>

 int main(void) {
     int e1, e2, p[2];
     struct epoll_event evt = {
         .events = EPOLLIN
     };

     e1 = epoll_create(1);
     e2 = epoll_create(2);
     pipe(p);

     epoll_ctl(e2, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, e1, &evt);
     epoll_ctl(e1, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, p[0], &evt);
     write(p[1], p, sizeof p);
     epoll_ctl(e1, EPOLL_CTL_ADD, e2, &evt);

     return 0;
 }

On insertion, check whether the inserted file is itself a struct epoll,
and if so, do a recursive walk to detect whether inserting this file would
create a loop of epoll structures, which could lead to deadlock.

[nelhage@ksplice.com: Use epmutex to serialize concurrent inserts]
Signed-off-by: Davide Libenzi <davidel@xmailserver.org>
Signed-off-by: Nelson Elhage <nelhage@ksplice.com>
Reported-by: Nelson Elhage <nelhage@ksplice.com>
Tested-by: Nelson Elhage <nelhage@ksplice.com>
Cc: <stable@kernel.org>		[2.6.34+, possibly earlier]
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>