linux-toradex.git/kernel/livepatch, branch v5.1-rc1

Merge branch 'for-5.1/atomic-replace' into for-linus

2019-03-05T14:56:59+00:00

The atomic replace allows to create cumulative patches. They are useful when
you maintain many livepatches and want to remove one that is lower on the
stack. In addition it is very useful when more patches touch the same function
and there are dependencies between them.

It's also a feature some of the distros are using already to distribute
their patches.

livepatch: Module coming and going callbacks can proceed with all listed patches

2019-02-06T10:03:14+00:00

Livepatches can no longer get enabled and disabled repeatedly.
The list klp_patches contains only enabled patches and eventually
the patch in transition.

The module coming and going callbacks do no longer need to check
for these state. They have to proceed with all listed patches.

Suggested-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence 
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek

livepatch: Introduce klp_for_each_patch macro

2019-02-06T09:49:30+00:00

There are already macros to iterate over struct klp_func and klp_object.

Add also klp_for_each_patch(). But make it internal because also
klp_patches list is internal.

Suggested-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence 
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek

livepatch: core: Return EOPNOTSUPP instead of ENOSYS

2019-02-06T09:43:57+00:00

As a result of an unsupported operation is better to use EOPNOTSUPP
as error code.
ENOSYS is only used for 'invalid syscall nr' and nothing else.

Signed-off-by: Alice Ferrazzi 
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek

livepatch: Remove signal sysfs attribute

2019-01-16T21:09:33+00:00

The fake signal is send automatically now. We can rely on it completely
and remove the sysfs attribute.

Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes 
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina

livepatch: Send a fake signal periodically

2019-01-16T21:09:09+00:00

An administrator may send a fake signal to all remaining blocking tasks
of a running transition by writing to
/sys/kernel/livepatch//signal attribute. Let's do it
automatically after 15 seconds. The timeout is chosen deliberately. It
gives the tasks enough time to transition themselves.

Theoretically, sending it once should be more than enough. However,
every task must get outside of a patched function to be successfully
transitioned. It could prove not to be simple and resending could be
helpful in that case.

A new workqueue job could be a cleaner solution to achieve it, but it
could also introduce deadlocks and cause more headaches with
synchronization and cancelling.

[jkosina@suse.cz: removed added newline]
Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes 
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina

livepatch: Remove ordering (stacking) of the livepatches

2019-01-11T19:51:24+00:00

The atomic replace and cumulative patches were introduced as a more secure
way to handle dependent patches. They simplify the logic:

  + Any new cumulative patch is supposed to take over shadow variables
    and changes made by callbacks from previous livepatches.

  + All replaced patches are discarded and the modules can be unloaded.
    As a result, there is only one scenario when a cumulative livepatch
    gets disabled.

The different handling of "normal" and cumulative patches might cause
confusion. It would make sense to keep only one mode. On the other hand,
it would be rude to enforce using the cumulative livepatches even for
trivial and independent (hot) fixes.

However, the stack of patches is not really necessary any longer.
The patch ordering was never clearly visible via the sysfs interface.
Also the "normal" patches need a lot of caution anyway.

Note that the list of enabled patches is still necessary but the ordering
is not longer enforced.

Otherwise, the code is ready to disable livepatches in an random order.
Namely, klp_check_stack_func() always looks for the function from
the livepatch that is being disabled. klp_func structures are just
removed from the related func_stack. Finally, the ftrace handlers
is removed only when the func_stack becomes empty.

Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek 
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina

livepatch: Remove Nop structures when unused

2019-01-11T19:51:24+00:00

Replaced patches are removed from the stack when the transition is
finished. It means that Nop structures will never be needed again
and can be removed. Why should we care?

  + Nop structures give the impression that the function is patched
    even though the ftrace handler has no effect.

  + Ftrace handlers do not come for free. They cause slowdown that might
    be visible in some workloads. The ftrace-related slowdown might
    actually be the reason why the function is no longer patched in
    the new cumulative patch. One would expect that cumulative patch
    would help solve these problems as well.

  + Cumulative patches are supposed to replace any earlier version of
    the patch. The amount of NOPs depends on which version was replaced.
    This multiplies the amount of scenarios that might happen.

    One might say that NOPs are innocent. But there are even optimized
    NOP instructions for different processors, for example, see
    arch/x86/kernel/alternative.c. And klp_ftrace_handler() is much
    more complicated.

  + It sounds natural to clean up a mess that is no longer needed.
    It could only be worse if we do not do it.

This patch allows to unpatch and free the dynamic structures independently
when the transition finishes.

The free part is a bit tricky because kobject free callbacks are called
asynchronously. We could not wait for them easily. Fortunately, we do
not have to. Any further access can be avoided by removing them from
the dynamic lists.

Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek 
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina

livepatch: Add atomic replace

2019-01-11T19:51:24+00:00

Sometimes we would like to revert a particular fix. Currently, this
is not easy because we want to keep all other fixes active and we
could revert only the last applied patch.

One solution would be to apply new patch that implemented all
the reverted functions like in the original code. It would work
as expected but there will be unnecessary redirections. In addition,
it would also require knowing which functions need to be reverted at
build time.

Another problem is when there are many patches that touch the same
functions. There might be dependencies between patches that are
not enforced on the kernel side. Also it might be pretty hard to
actually prepare the patch and ensure compatibility with the other
patches.

Atomic replace && cumulative patches:

A better solution would be to create cumulative patch and say that
it replaces all older ones.

This patch adds a new "replace" flag to struct klp_patch. When it is
enabled, a set of 'nop' klp_func will be dynamically created for all
functions that are already being patched but that will no longer be
modified by the new patch. They are used as a new target during
the patch transition.

The idea is to handle Nops' structures like the static ones. When
the dynamic structures are allocated, we initialize all values that
are normally statically defined.

The only exception is "new_func" in struct klp_func. It has to point
to the original function and the address is known only when the object
(module) is loaded. Note that we really need to set it. The address is
used, for example, in klp_check_stack_func().

Nevertheless we still need to distinguish the dynamically allocated
structures in some operations. For this, we add "nop" flag into
struct klp_func and "dynamic" flag into struct klp_object. They
need special handling in the following situations:

  + The structures are added into the lists of objects and functions
    immediately. In fact, the lists were created for this purpose.

  + The address of the original function is known only when the patched
    object (module) is loaded. Therefore it is copied later in
    klp_init_object_loaded().

  + The ftrace handler must not set PC to func->new_func. It would cause
    infinite loop because the address points back to the beginning of
    the original function.

  + The various free() functions must free the structure itself.

Note that other ways to detect the dynamic structures are not considered
safe. For example, even the statically defined struct klp_object might
include empty funcs array. It might be there just to run some callbacks.

Also note that the safe iterator must be used in the free() functions.
Otherwise already freed structures might get accessed.

Special callbacks handling:

The callbacks from the replaced patches are _not_ called by intention.
It would be pretty hard to define a reasonable semantic and implement it.

It might even be counter-productive. The new patch is cumulative. It is
supposed to include most of the changes from older patches. In most cases,
it will not want to call pre_unpatch() post_unpatch() callbacks from
the replaced patches. It would disable/break things for no good reasons.
Also it should be easier to handle various scenarios in a single script
in the new patch than think about interactions caused by running many
scripts from older patches. Not to say that the old scripts even would
not expect to be called in this situation.

Removing replaced patches:

One nice effect of the cumulative patches is that the code from the
older patches is no longer used. Therefore the replaced patches can
be removed. It has several advantages:

  + Nops' structs will no longer be necessary and might be removed.
    This would save memory, restore performance (no ftrace handler),
    allow clear view on what is really patched.

  + Disabling the patch will cause using the original code everywhere.
    Therefore the livepatch callbacks could handle only one scenario.
    Note that the complication is already complex enough when the patch
    gets enabled. It is currently solved by calling callbacks only from
    the new cumulative patch.

  + The state is clean in both the sysfs interface and lsmod. The modules
    with the replaced livepatches might even get removed from the system.

Some people actually expected this behavior from the beginning. After all
a cumulative patch is supposed to "completely" replace an existing one.
It is like when a new version of an application replaces an older one.

This patch does the first step. It removes the replaced patches from
the list of patches. It is safe. The consistency model ensures that
they are no longer used. By other words, each process works only with
the structures from klp_transition_patch.

The removal is done by a special function. It combines actions done by
__disable_patch() and klp_complete_transition(). But it is a fast
track without all the transaction-related stuff.

Signed-off-by: Jason Baron 
[pmladek@suse.com: Split, reuse existing code, simplified]
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek 
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf 
Cc: Jessica Yu 
Cc: Jiri Kosina 
Cc: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina

livepatch: Use lists to manage patches, objects and functions

2019-01-11T19:51:24+00:00

Currently klp_patch contains a pointer to a statically allocated array of
struct klp_object and struct klp_objects contains a pointer to a statically
allocated array of klp_func. In order to allow for the dynamic allocation
of objects and functions, link klp_patch, klp_object, and klp_func together
via linked lists. This allows us to more easily allocate new objects and
functions, while having the iterator be a simple linked list walk.

The static structures are added to the lists early. It allows to add
the dynamically allocated objects before klp_init_object() and
klp_init_func() calls. Therefore it reduces the further changes
to the code.

This patch does not change the existing behavior.

Signed-off-by: Jason Baron 
[pmladek@suse.com: Initialize lists before init calls]
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek 
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence 
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf 
Cc: Jiri Kosina 
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina