linux.git/Documentation/livepatch, branch v5.1

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

selftests/livepatch: introduce tests

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

Add a few livepatch modules and simple target modules that the included
regression suite can run tests against:

  - basic livepatching (multiple patches, atomic replace)
  - pre/post (un)patch callbacks
  - shadow variable API

Signed-off-by: Joe Lawrence 
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek 
Tested-by: Miroslav Benes 
Tested-by: Alice Ferrazzi 
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence 
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf 
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: Atomic replace and cumulative patches documentation

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

User documentation for the atomic replace feature. It makes it easier
to maintain livepatches using so-called cumulative patches.

Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek 
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes 
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence 
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: Simplify API by removing registration step

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

The possibility to re-enable a registered patch was useful for immediate
patches where the livepatch module had to stay until the system reboot.
The improved consistency model allows to achieve the same result by
unloading and loading the livepatch module again.

Also we are going to add a feature called atomic replace. It will allow
to create a patch that would replace all already registered patches.
The aim is to handle dependent patches more securely. It will obsolete
the stack of patches that helped to handle the dependencies so far.
Then it might be unclear when a cumulative patch re-enabling is safe.

It would be complicated to support the many modes. Instead we could
actually make the API and code easier to understand.

Therefore, remove the two step public API. All the checks and init calls
are moved from klp_register_patch() to klp_enabled_patch(). Also the patch
is automatically freed, including the sysfs interface when the transition
to the disabled state is completed.

As a result, there is never a disabled patch on the top of the stack.
Therefore we do not need to check the stack in __klp_enable_patch().
And we could simplify the check in __klp_disable_patch().

Also the API and logic is much easier. It is enough to call
klp_enable_patch() in module_init() call. The patch can be disabled
by writing '0' into /sys/kernel/livepatch//enabled. Then the module
can be removed once the transition finishes and sysfs interface is freed.

The only problem is how to free the structures and kobjects safely.
The operation is triggered from the sysfs interface. We could not put
the related kobject from there because it would cause lock inversion
between klp_mutex and kernfs locks, see kn->count lockdep map.

Therefore, offload the free task to a workqueue. It is perfectly fine:

  + The patch can no longer be used in the livepatch operations.

  + The module could not be removed until the free operation finishes
    and module_put() is called.

  + The operation is asynchronous already when the first
    klp_try_complete_transition() fails and another call
    is queued with a delay.

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

livepatch: Remove not longer valid limitations from the documentation

2018-05-24T13:37:57+00:00

Semantic changes are possible since the commit d83a7cb375eec21f04
("livepatch: change to a per-task consistency model").

Also data structures can be patched since the commit 439e7271dc2b63de37
("livepatch: introduce shadow variable API").

It is a high time we removed these limitations from the documentation.

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

livepatch: Allow to call a custom callback when freeing shadow variables

2018-04-17T11:42:48+00:00

We might need to do some actions before the shadow variable is freed.
For example, we might need to remove it from a list or free some data
that it points to.

This is already possible now. The user can get the shadow variable
by klp_shadow_get(), do the necessary actions, and then call
klp_shadow_free().

This patch allows to do it a more elegant way. The user could implement
the needed actions in a callback that is passed to klp_shadow_free()
as a parameter. The callback usually does reverse operations to
the constructor callback that can be called by klp_shadow_*alloc().

It is especially useful for klp_shadow_free_all(). There we need to do
these extra actions for each found shadow variable with the given ID.

Note that the memory used by the shadow variable itself is still released
later by rcu callback. It is needed to protect internal structures that
keep all shadow variables. But the destructor is called immediately.
The shadow variable must not be access anyway after klp_shadow_free()
is called. The user is responsible to protect this any suitable way.

Be aware that the destructor is called under klp_shadow_lock. It is
the same as for the contructor in klp_shadow_alloc().

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

livepatch: Initialize shadow variables safely by a custom callback

2018-04-17T11:42:48+00:00

The existing API allows to pass a sample data to initialize the shadow
data. It works well when the data are position independent. But it fails
miserably when we need to set a pointer to the shadow structure itself.

Unfortunately, we might need to initialize the pointer surprisingly
often because of struct list_head. It is even worse because the list
might be hidden in other common structures, for example, struct mutex,
struct wait_queue_head.

For example, this was needed to fix races in ALSA sequencer. It required
to add mutex into struct snd_seq_client. See commit b3defb791b26ea06
("ALSA: seq: Make ioctls race-free") and commit d15d662e89fc667b9
("ALSA: seq: Fix racy pool initializations")

This patch makes the API more safe. A custom constructor function and data
are passed to klp_shadow_*alloc() functions instead of the sample data.

Note that ctor_data are no longer a template for shadow->data. It might
point to any data that might be necessary when the constructor is called.

Also note that the constructor is called under klp_shadow_lock. It is
an internal spin_lock that synchronizes alloc() vs. get() operations,
see klp_shadow_get_or_alloc(). On one hand, this adds a risk of ABBA
deadlocks. On the other hand, it allows to do some operations safely.
For example, we could add the new structure into an existing list.
This must be done only once when the structure is allocated.

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