signal: break out of wait loops on kthread_stop()

I was recently surprised to learn that msleep_interruptible(),
wait_for_completion_interruptible_timeout(), and related functions
simply hung when I called kthread_stop() on kthreads using them. The
solution to fixing the case with msleep_interruptible() was more simply
to move to schedule_timeout_interruptible(). Why?

The reason is that msleep_interruptible(), and many functions just like
it, has a loop like this:

        while (timeout && !signal_pending(current))
                timeout = schedule_timeout_interruptible(timeout);

The call to kthread_stop() woke up the thread, so schedule_timeout_
interruptible() returned early, but because signal_pending() returned
true, it went back into another timeout, which was never woken up.

This wait loop pattern is common to various pieces of code, and I
suspect that the subtle misuse in a kthread that caused a deadlock in
the code I looked at last week is also found elsewhere.

So this commit causes signal_pending() to return true when
kthread_stop() is called, by setting TIF_NOTIFY_SIGNAL.

The same also probably applies to the similar kthread_park()
functionality, but that can be addressed later, as its semantics are
slightly different.

Cc: Eric W. Biederman <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Jason A. Donenfeld <[email protected]>
v1: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220627120020[email protected]
v2: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220627145716[email protected]
v3: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220628161441[email protected]
v4: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220711202136[email protected]
v5: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20220711232123[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Eric W. Biederman <[email protected]>

diff --git a/kernel/kthread.c b/kernel/kthread.c
index 544fd4097406892d9280b9acb37303e231d0b141..4507004ca01c5f5c85c33d44a915ac167aa48216 100644 (file)
--- a/kernel/kthread.c
+++ b/kernel/kthread.c
@@ -704,6 +704,7 @@ int kthread_stop(struct task_struct *k)
        kthread = to_kthread(k);
        set_bit(KTHREAD_SHOULD_STOP, &kthread->flags);
        kthread_unpark(k);
+       set_tsk_thread_flag(k, TIF_NOTIFY_SIGNAL);
        wake_up_process(k);
        wait_for_completion(&kthread->exited);
        ret = kthread->result;