kernel/fork: fix CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID regression in nscd
Commit
fec1d0115240 ("[PATCH] Disable CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID for abnormal
exit") has caused a subtle regression in nscd which uses
CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID to clear the nscd_certainly_running flag in the
shared databases, so that the clients are notified when nscd is
restarted. Now, when nscd uses a non-persistent database, clients that
have it mapped keep thinking the database is being updated by nscd, when
in fact nscd has created a new (anonymous) one (for non-persistent
databases it uses an unlinked file as backend).
The original proposal for the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID change claimed
(https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/25/233):
: The NPTL library uses the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID flag on clone() syscalls
: on behalf of pthread_create() library calls. This feature is used to
: request that the kernel clear the thread-id in user space (at an address
: provided in the syscall) when the thread disassociates itself from the
: address space, which is done in mm_release().
:
: Unfortunately, when a multi-threaded process incurs a core dump (such as
: from a SIGSEGV), the core-dumping thread sends SIGKILL signals to all of
: the other threads, which then proceed to clear their user-space tids
: before synchronizing in exit_mm() with the start of core dumping. This
: misrepresents the state of process's address space at the time of the
: SIGSEGV and makes it more difficult for someone to debug NPTL and glibc
: problems (misleading him/her to conclude that the threads had gone away
: before the fault).
:
: The fix below is to simply avoid the CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID action if a
: core dump has been initiated.
The resulting patch from Roland (https://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/26/269)
seems to have a larger scope than the original patch asked for. It
seems that limitting the scope of the check to core dumping should work
for SIGSEGV issue describe above.
[Changelog partly based on Andreas' description]
Fixes: fec1d0115240 ("[PATCH] Disable CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID for abnormal exit")
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <[email protected]>
Tested-by: William Preston <[email protected]>
Acked-by: Oleg Nesterov <[email protected]>
Cc: Roland McGrath <[email protected]>
Cc: Andreas Schwab <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>