From cb424ffe9f45ad80267f2a98fbd9bf21caa0ce22 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kay Sievers Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2012 09:50:09 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] kmsg: properly handle concurrent non-blocking read() from /proc/kmsg The /proc/kmsg read() interface is internally simply wired up to a sequence of syslog() syscalls, which might are racy between their checks and actions, regarding concurrency. In the (very uncommon) case of concurrent readers of /dev/kmsg, relying on usual O_NONBLOCK behavior, the recently introduced mutex might block an O_NONBLOCK reader in read(), when poll() returns for it, but another process has already read the data in the meantime. We've seen that while running artificial test setups and tools that "fight" about /proc/kmsg data. This restores the original /proc/kmsg behavior, where in case of concurrent read()s, poll() might wake up but the read() syscall will just return 0 to the caller, while another process has "stolen" the data. This is in the general case not the expected behavior, but it is the exact same one, that can easily be triggered with a 3.4 kernel, and some tools might just rely on it. The mutex is not needed, the original integrity issue which introduced it, is in the meantime covered by: "fill buffer with more than a single message for SYSLOG_ACTION_READ" 116e90b23f74d303e8d607c7a7d54f60f14ab9f2 Cc: Yuanhan Liu Acked-by: Jan Beulich Signed-off-by: Kay Sievers Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman --- kernel/printk.c | 9 +-------- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 8 deletions(-) diff --git a/kernel/printk.c b/kernel/printk.c index 37cde752cb8a..be9a82b2f0b3 100644 --- a/kernel/printk.c +++ b/kernel/printk.c @@ -1021,7 +1021,6 @@ int do_syslog(int type, char __user *buf, int len, bool from_file) { bool clear = false; static int saved_console_loglevel = -1; - static DEFINE_MUTEX(syslog_mutex); int error; error = check_syslog_permissions(type, from_file); @@ -1048,17 +1047,11 @@ int do_syslog(int type, char __user *buf, int len, bool from_file) error = -EFAULT; goto out; } - error = mutex_lock_interruptible(&syslog_mutex); - if (error) - goto out; error = wait_event_interruptible(log_wait, syslog_seq != log_next_seq); - if (error) { - mutex_unlock(&syslog_mutex); + if (error) goto out; - } error = syslog_print(buf, len); - mutex_unlock(&syslog_mutex); break; /* Read/clear last kernel messages */ case SYSLOG_ACTION_READ_CLEAR: -- 2.39.5