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Commit 842c0884 authored by Petr Mladek's avatar Petr Mladek Committed by Jiri Kosina
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livepatch: Fix stacking of patches with respect to RCU

rcu_read_(un)lock(), list_*_rcu(), and synchronize_rcu() are used for a secure
access and manipulation of the list of patches that modify the same function.
In particular, it is the variable func_stack that is accessible from the ftrace
handler via struct ftrace_ops and klp_ops.

Of course, it synchronizes also some states of the patch on the top of the
stack, e.g. func->transition in klp_ftrace_handler.

At the same time, this mechanism guards also the manipulation of
task->patch_state. It is modified according to the state of the transition and
the state of the process.

Now, all this works well as long as RCU works well. Sadly livepatching might
get into some corner cases when this is not true. For example, RCU is not
watching when rcu_read_lock() is taken in idle threads.  It is because they
might sleep and prevent reaching the grace period for too long.

There are ways how to make RCU watching even in idle threads, see
rcu_irq_enter(). But there ...
parent 5720acf4
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