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authorJosh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>2017-02-13 19:42:40 -0600
committerJiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>2017-03-08 09:36:21 +0100
commitd83a7cb375eec21f04c83542395d08b2f6641da2 (patch)
tree9e1d65c763c4df78d43b93dc037f9bf7f1ca3ef1 /samples
parentf5e547f4ac785c65a39211f0b8e4ffc4fe09112d (diff)
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livepatch: change to a per-task consistency model
Change livepatch to use a basic per-task consistency model. This is the foundation which will eventually enable us to patch those ~10% of security patches which change function or data semantics. This is the biggest remaining piece needed to make livepatch more generally useful. This code stems from the design proposal made by Vojtech [1] in November 2014. It's a hybrid of kGraft and kpatch: it uses kGraft's per-task consistency and syscall barrier switching combined with kpatch's stack trace switching. There are also a number of fallback options which make it quite flexible. Patches are applied on a per-task basis, when the task is deemed safe to switch over. When a patch is enabled, livepatch enters into a transition state where tasks are converging to the patched state. Usually this transition state can complete in a few seconds. The same sequence occurs when a patch is disabled, except the tasks converge from the patched state to the unpatched state. An interrupt handler inherits the patched state of the task it interrupts. The same is true for forked tasks: the child inherits the patched state of the parent. Livepatch uses several complementary approaches to determine when it's safe to patch tasks: 1. The first and most effective approach is stack checking of sleeping tasks. If no affected functions are on the stack of a given task, the task is patched. In most cases this will patch most or all of the tasks on the first try. Otherwise it'll keep trying periodically. This option is only available if the architecture has reliable stacks (HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE). 2. The second approach, if needed, is kernel exit switching. A task is switched when it returns to user space from a system call, a user space IRQ, or a signal. It's useful in the following cases: a) Patching I/O-bound user tasks which are sleeping on an affected function. In this case you have to send SIGSTOP and SIGCONT to force it to exit the kernel and be patched. b) Patching CPU-bound user tasks. If the task is highly CPU-bound then it will get patched the next time it gets interrupted by an IRQ. c) In the future it could be useful for applying patches for architectures which don't yet have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE. In this case you would have to signal most of the tasks on the system. However this isn't supported yet because there's currently no way to patch kthreads without HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE. 3. For idle "swapper" tasks, since they don't ever exit the kernel, they instead have a klp_update_patch_state() call in the idle loop which allows them to be patched before the CPU enters the idle state. (Note there's not yet such an approach for kthreads.) All the above approaches may be skipped by setting the 'immediate' flag in the 'klp_patch' struct, which will disable per-task consistency and patch all tasks immediately. This can be useful if the patch doesn't change any function or data semantics. Note that, even with this flag set, it's possible that some tasks may still be running with an old version of the function, until that function returns. There's also an 'immediate' flag in the 'klp_func' struct which allows you to specify that certain functions in the patch can be applied without per-task consistency. This might be useful if you want to patch a common function like schedule(), and the function change doesn't need consistency but the rest of the patch does. For architectures which don't have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE, the user must set patch->immediate which causes all tasks to be patched immediately. This option should be used with care, only when the patch doesn't change any function or data semantics. In the future, architectures which don't have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE may be allowed to use per-task consistency if we can come up with another way to patch kthreads. The /sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/transition file shows whether a patch is in transition. Only a single patch (the topmost patch on the stack) can be in transition at a given time. A patch can remain in transition indefinitely, if any of the tasks are stuck in the initial patch state. A transition can be reversed and effectively canceled by writing the opposite value to the /sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/enabled file while the transition is in progress. Then all the tasks will attempt to converge back to the original patch state. [1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20141107140458.GA21774@suse.cz Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> Acked-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> # for the scheduler changes Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
Diffstat (limited to 'samples')
-rw-r--r--samples/livepatch/livepatch-sample.c17
1 files changed, 17 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/samples/livepatch/livepatch-sample.c b/samples/livepatch/livepatch-sample.c
index e34f871e69b1..629e0dca0887 100644
--- a/samples/livepatch/livepatch-sample.c
+++ b/samples/livepatch/livepatch-sample.c
@@ -17,6 +17,8 @@
* along with this program; if not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
*/
+#define pr_fmt(fmt) KBUILD_MODNAME ": " fmt
+
#include <linux/module.h>
#include <linux/kernel.h>
#include <linux/livepatch.h>
@@ -69,6 +71,21 @@ static int livepatch_init(void)
{
int ret;
+ if (!klp_have_reliable_stack() && !patch.immediate) {
+ /*
+ * WARNING: Be very careful when using 'patch.immediate' in
+ * your patches. It's ok to use it for simple patches like
+ * this, but for more complex patches which change function
+ * semantics, locking semantics, or data structures, it may not
+ * be safe. Use of this option will also prevent removal of
+ * the patch.
+ *
+ * See Documentation/livepatch/livepatch.txt for more details.
+ */
+ patch.immediate = true;
+ pr_notice("The consistency model isn't supported for your architecture. Bypassing safety mechanisms and applying the patch immediately.\n");
+ }
+
ret = klp_register_patch(&patch);
if (ret)
return ret;