signal: break out of wait loops on kthread_stop()
authorJason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>
Mon, 11 Jul 2022 23:21:23 +0000 (01:21 +0200)
committerEric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Mon, 18 Jul 2022 14:53:38 +0000 (09:53 -0500)
commita7c01fa93aeb03ab76cd3cb2107990dd160498e6
tree23d0aa124d3946238594aea55bcf20eb97d33770
parentf2906aa863381afb0015a9eb7fefad885d4e5a56
signal: break out of wait loops on kthread_stop()

I was recently surprised to learn that msleep_interruptible(),
wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(), and related functions
simply hung when I called kthread_stop() on kthreads using them. The
solution to fixing the case with msleep_interruptible() was more simply
to move to schedule_timeout_interruptible(). Why?

The reason is that msleep_interruptible(), and many functions just like
it, has a loop like this:

        while (timeout && !signal_pending(current))
                timeout = schedule_timeout_interruptible(timeout);

The call to kthread_stop() woke up the thread, so schedule_timeout_
interruptible() returned early, but because signal_pending() returned
true, it went back into another timeout, which was never woken up.

This wait loop pattern is common to various pieces of code, and I
suspect that the subtle misuse in a kthread that caused a deadlock in
the code I looked at last week is also found elsewhere.

So this commit causes signal_pending() to return true when
kthread_stop() is called, by setting TIF_NOTIFY_SIGNAL.

The same also probably applies to the similar kthread_park()
functionality, but that can be addressed later, as its semantics are
slightly different.

Cc: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <Jason@zx2c4.com>
v1: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220627120020.608117-1-Jason@zx2c4.com
v2: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220627145716.641185-1-Jason@zx2c4.com
v3: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220628161441.892925-1-Jason@zx2c4.com
v4: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220711202136.64458-1-Jason@zx2c4.com
v5: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220711232123.136330-1-Jason@zx2c4.com
Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
kernel/kthread.c