livepatch: send a fake signal to all blocking tasks

Live patching consistency model is of LEAVE_PATCHED_SET and
SWITCH_THREAD. This means that all tasks in the system have to be marked
one by one as safe to call a new patched function. Safe means when a
task is not (sleeping) in a set of patched functions. That is, no
patched function is on the task's stack. Another clearly safe place is
the boundary between kernel and userspace. The patching waits for all
tasks to get outside of the patched set or to cross the boundary. The
transition is completed afterwards.

The problem is that a task can block the transition for quite a long
time, if not forever. It could sleep in a set of patched functions, for
example.  Luckily we can force the task to leave the set by sending it a
fake signal, that is a signal with no data in signal pending structures
(no handler, no sign of proper signal delivered). Suspend/freezer use
this to freeze the tasks as well. The task gets TIF_SIGPENDING set and
is woken up (if it has been sleeping in the kernel before) or kicked by
rescheduling IPI (if it was running on other CPU). This causes the task
to go to kernel/userspace boundary where the signal would be handled and
the task would be marked as safe in terms of live patching.

There are tasks which are not affected by this technique though. The
fake signal is not sent to kthreads. They should be handled differently.
They can be woken up so they leave the patched set and their
TIF_PATCH_PENDING can be cleared thanks to stack checking.

For the sake of completeness, if the task is in TASK_RUNNING state but
not currently running on some CPU it doesn't get the IPI, but it would
eventually handle the signal anyway. Second, if the task runs in the
kernel (in TASK_RUNNING state) it gets the IPI, but the signal is not
handled on return from the interrupt. It would be handled on return to
the userspace in the future when the fake signal is sent again. Stack
checking deals with these cases in a better way.

If the task was sleeping in a syscall it would be woken by our fake
signal, it would check if TIF_SIGPENDING is set (by calling
signal_pending() predicate) and return ERESTART* or EINTR. Syscalls with
ERESTART* return values are restarted in case of the fake signal (see
do_signal()). EINTR is propagated back to the userspace program. This
could disturb the program, but...

* each process dealing with signals should react accordingly to EINTR
  return values.
* syscalls returning EINTR happen to be quite common situation in the
  system even if no fake signal is sent.
* freezer sends the fake signal and does not deal with EINTR anyhow.
  Thus EINTR values are returned when the system is resumed.

The very safe marking is done in architectures' "entry" on syscall and
interrupt/exception exit paths, and in a stack checking functions of
livepatch.  TIF_PATCH_PENDING is cleared and the next
recalc_sigpending() drops TIF_SIGPENDING. In connection with this, also
call klp_update_patch_state() before do_signal(), so that
recalc_sigpending() in dequeue_signal() can clear TIF_PATCH_PENDING
immediately and thus prevent a double call of do_signal().

Note that the fake signal is not sent to stopped/traced tasks. Such task
prevents the patching to finish till it continues again (is not traced
anymore).

Last, sending the fake signal is not automatic. It is done only when
admin requests it by writing 1 to signal sysfs attribute in livepatch
sysfs directory.

Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org
Cc: x86@kernel.org
Acked-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au> (powerpc)
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-livepatch b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-livepatch
index d5d39748382f..3bb9d5bc1ce3 100644
--- a/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-livepatch
+++ b/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-livepatch
@@ -33,6 +33,18 @@ Description:
 		An attribute which indicates whether the patch is currently in
 		transition.
 
+What:		/sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/signal
+Date:		Nov 2017
+KernelVersion:	4.15.0
+Contact:	live-patching@vger.kernel.org
+Description:
+		A writable attribute that allows administrator to affect the
+		course of an existing transition. Writing 1 sends a fake
+		signal to all remaining blocking tasks. The fake signal
+		means that no proper signal is delivered (there is no data in
+		signal pending structures). Tasks are interrupted or woken up,
+		and forced to change their patched state.
+
 What:		/sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/<object>
 Date:		Nov 2014
 KernelVersion:	3.19.0