genetlink: remove genl_bind
A potential deadlock can occur during registering or unregistering a new generic netlink family between the main nl_table_lock and the cb_lock where each thread wants the lock held by the other, as demonstrated below. 1) Thread 1 is performing a netlink_bind() operation on a socket. As part of this call, it will call netlink_lock_table(), incrementing the nl_table_users count to 1. 2) Thread 2 is registering (or unregistering) a genl_family via the genl_(un)register_family() API. The cb_lock semaphore will be taken for writing. 3) Thread 1 will call genl_bind() as part of the bind operation to handle subscribing to GENL multicast groups at the request of the user. It will attempt to take the cb_lock semaphore for reading, but it will fail and be scheduled away, waiting for Thread 2 to finish the write. 4) Thread 2 will call netlink_table_grab() during the (un)registration call. However, as Thread 1 has incremented nl_table_users, it will not be able to proceed, and both threads will be stuck waiting for the other. genl_bind() is a noop, unless a genl_family implements the mcast_bind() function to handle setting up family-specific multicast operations. Since no one in-tree uses this functionality as Cong pointed out, simply removing the genl_bind() function will remove the possibility for deadlock, as there is no attempt by Thread 1 above to take the cb_lock semaphore. Fixes: c380d9a7 ("genetlink: pass multicast bind/unbind to families") Suggested-by: Cong Wang <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com> Acked-by: Johannes Berg <johannes.berg@intel.com> Reported-by: kernel test robot <lkp@intel.com> Signed-off-by: Sean Tranchetti <stranche@codeaurora.org> Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Showing
Please register or sign in to comment