Commit 0cb64249ca ("firmware_loader: abort request if wait_for_completion
is interrupted") added via 4.0 added support to abort the fallback mechanism
when a signal was detected and wait_for_completion_interruptible() returned
-ERESTARTSYS -- for instance when a user hits CTRL-C. The abort was overly
*too* effective.
When a child process terminates (successful or not) the signal SIGCHLD can
be sent to the parent process which ran the child in the background and
later triggered a sync request for firmware through a sysfs interface which
relies on the fallback mechanism. This signal in turn can be recieved by the
interruptible wait we constructed on firmware_class and detects it as an
abort *before* userspace could get a chance to write the firmware. Upon
failure -EAGAIN is returned, so userspace is also kept in the dark about
exactly what happened.
We can reproduce the issue with the fw_fallback.sh selftest:
Before this patch:
$ sudo tools/testing/selftests/firmware/fw_fallback.sh
...
tools/testing/selftests/firmware/fw_fallback.sh: error - sync firmware request cancelled due to SIGCHLD
After this patch:
$ sudo tools/testing/selftests/firmware/fw_fallback.sh
...
tools/testing/selftests/firmware/fw_fallback.sh: SIGCHLD on sync ignored as expected
Fix this by making the wait killable -- only killable by SIGKILL (kill -9).
We loose the ability to allow userspace to cancel a write with CTRL-C
(SIGINT), however its been decided the compromise to require SIGKILL is
worth the gains.
Chances of this issue occuring are low due to the number of drivers upstream
exclusively relying on the fallback mechanism for firmware (2 drivers),
however this is observed in the field with custom drivers with sysfs
triggers to load firmware. Only distributions relying on the fallback
mechanism are impacted as well. An example reported issue was on Android,
as follows:
1) Android init (pid=1) fork()s (say pid=42) [this child process is totally
unrelated to firmware loading, it could be sleep 2; for all we care ]
2) Android init (pid=1) does a write() on a (driver custom) sysfs file which
ends up calling request_firmware() kernel side
3) The firmware loading fallback mechanism is used, the request is sent to
userspace and pid 1 waits in the kernel on wait_*
4) before firmware loading completes pid 42 dies (for any reason, even
normal termination)
5) Kernel delivers SIGCHLD to pid=1 to tell it a child has died, which
causes -ERESTARTSYS to be returned from wait_*
6) The kernel's wait aborts and return -EAGAIN for the
request_firmware() caller.
Cc: stable <stable@vger.kernel.org> # 4.0
Fixes: 0cb64249ca ("firmware_loader: abort request if wait_for_completion is interrupted")
Suggested-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
Suggested-by: Dmitry Torokhov <dmitry.torokhov@gmail.com>
Tested-by: Martin Fuzzey <mfuzzey@parkeon.com>
Reported-by: Martin Fuzzey <mfuzzey@parkeon.com>
Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
260d9f2fc5