The system deadlocks (at least since 2.6.10) when
call_usermodehelper(UMH_WAIT_EXEC) request triggered
call_usermodehelper(UMH_WAIT_PROC) request.
This is because "khelper thread is waiting for the worker thread at
wait_for_completion() in do_fork() since the worker thread was created
with CLONE_VFORK flag" and "the worker thread cannot call complete()
because do_execve() is blocked at UMH_WAIT_PROC request" and "the khelper
thread cannot start processing UMH_WAIT_PROC request because the khelper
thread is waiting for the worker thread at wait_for_completion() in
do_fork()".
In order to avoid deadlock, do not try to call wait_for_completion() in
call_usermodehelper_exec() if the worker thread was created by khelper
thread with CLONE_VFORK flag.
The easiest example to observe this deadlock is to use a corrupted
/sbin/hotplug binary (like shown below).
call_usermodehelper("/tmp/dummy", UMH_WAIT_EXEC) is called from
kobject_uevent_env() in lib/kobject_uevent.c upon loading/unloading a
module. do_execve("/tmp/dummy") triggers a call to
request_module("binfmt-0000") from search_binary_handler() which in turn
calls call_usermodehelper(UMH_WAIT_PROC).
There are various hooks called during do_execve() operation (e.g.
security_bprm_check(), audit_bprm(), "struct
linux_binfmt"->load_binary()). If one of such hooks triggers
UMH_WAIT_EXEC, this deadlock will happen even if /sbin/hotplug is not
corrupted.
[akpm@linux-foundation.org: add comment to kmod_thread_locker] Signed-off-by: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp> Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com> Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>