time: Avoid signed overflow in timekeeping_get_ns()

1e75fa8 "time: Condense timekeeper.xtime into xtime_sec" replaced a call to
clocksource_cyc2ns() from timekeeping_get_ns() with an open-coded version
of the same logic to avoid keeping a semi-redundant struct timespec
in struct timekeeper.

However, the commit also introduced a subtle semantic change - where
clocksource_cyc2ns() uses purely unsigned math, the new version introduces
a signed temporary, meaning that if (delta * tk->mult) has a 63-bit
overflow the following shift will still give a negative result.  The
choice of 'maxsec' in __clocksource_updatefreq_scale() means this will
generally happen if there's a ~10 minute pause in examining the
clocksource.

This can be triggered on a powerpc KVM guest by stopping it from qemu for
a bit over 10 minutes.  After resuming time has jumped backwards several
minutes causing numerous problems (jiffies does not advance, msleep()s can
be extended by minutes..).  It doesn't happen on x86 KVM guests, because
the guest TSC is effectively frozen while the guest is stopped, which is
not the case for the powerpc timebase.

Obviously an unsigned (64 bit) overflow will only take twice as long as a
signed, 63-bit overflow.  I don't know the time code well enough to know
if that will still cause incorrect calculations, or if a 64-bit overflow
is avoided elsewhere.

Still, an incorrect forwards clock adjustment will cause less trouble than
time going backwards.  So, this patch removes the potential for
intermediate signed overflow.

Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org  (3.7+)
Suggested-by: Laurent Vivier <lvivier@redhat.com>
Tested-by: Laurent Vivier <lvivier@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
Signed-off-by: John Stultz <john.stultz@linaro.org>

0 files changed, 0 insertions, 0 deletions