summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/Documentation/livepatch/livepatch.txt
AgeCommit message (Collapse)AuthorFilesLines
2018-05-24livepatch: Remove not longer valid limitations from the documentationPetr Mladek1-24/+0
Semantic changes are possible since the commit d83a7cb375eec21f04 ("livepatch: change to a per-task consistency model"). Also data structures can be patched since the commit 439e7271dc2b63de37 ("livepatch: introduce shadow variable API"). It is a high time we removed these limitations from the documentation. Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com> Acked-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2018-01-11livepatch: Remove immediate featureMiroslav Benes1-62/+27
Immediate flag has been used to disable per-task consistency and patch all tasks immediately. It could be useful if the patch doesn't change any function or data semantics. However, it causes problems on its own. The consistency problem is currently broken with respect to immediate patches. func a patches 1i 2i 3 When the patch 3 is applied, only 2i function is checked (by stack checking facility). There might be a task sleeping in 1i though. Such task is migrated to 3, because we do not check 1i in klp_check_stack_func() at all. Coming atomic replace feature would be easier to implement and more reliable without immediate. Thus, remove immediate feature completely and save us from the problems. Note that force feature has the similar problem. However it is considered as a last resort. If used, administrator should not apply any new live patches and should plan for reboot into an updated kernel. The architectures would now need to provide HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE to fully support livepatch. Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2017-12-07livepatch: force transition to finishMiroslav Benes1-2/+16
If a task sleeps in a set of patched functions uninterruptedly, it could block the whole transition indefinitely. Thus it may be useful to clear its TIF_PATCH_PENDING to allow the process to finish. Admin can do that now by writing to force sysfs attribute in livepatch sysfs directory. TIF_PATCH_PENDING is then cleared for all tasks and the transition can finish successfully. Important note! Administrator should not use this feature without a clearance from a patch distributor. It must be checked that by doing so the consistency model guarantees are not violated. Removal (rmmod) of patch modules is permanently disabled when the feature is used. It cannot be guaranteed there is no task sleeping in such module. Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2017-12-05livepatch: send a fake signal to all blocking tasksMiroslav Benes1-2/+9
Live patching consistency model is of LEAVE_PATCHED_SET and SWITCH_THREAD. This means that all tasks in the system have to be marked one by one as safe to call a new patched function. Safe means when a task is not (sleeping) in a set of patched functions. That is, no patched function is on the task's stack. Another clearly safe place is the boundary between kernel and userspace. The patching waits for all tasks to get outside of the patched set or to cross the boundary. The transition is completed afterwards. The problem is that a task can block the transition for quite a long time, if not forever. It could sleep in a set of patched functions, for example. Luckily we can force the task to leave the set by sending it a fake signal, that is a signal with no data in signal pending structures (no handler, no sign of proper signal delivered). Suspend/freezer use this to freeze the tasks as well. The task gets TIF_SIGPENDING set and is woken up (if it has been sleeping in the kernel before) or kicked by rescheduling IPI (if it was running on other CPU). This causes the task to go to kernel/userspace boundary where the signal would be handled and the task would be marked as safe in terms of live patching. There are tasks which are not affected by this technique though. The fake signal is not sent to kthreads. They should be handled differently. They can be woken up so they leave the patched set and their TIF_PATCH_PENDING can be cleared thanks to stack checking. For the sake of completeness, if the task is in TASK_RUNNING state but not currently running on some CPU it doesn't get the IPI, but it would eventually handle the signal anyway. Second, if the task runs in the kernel (in TASK_RUNNING state) it gets the IPI, but the signal is not handled on return from the interrupt. It would be handled on return to the userspace in the future when the fake signal is sent again. Stack checking deals with these cases in a better way. If the task was sleeping in a syscall it would be woken by our fake signal, it would check if TIF_SIGPENDING is set (by calling signal_pending() predicate) and return ERESTART* or EINTR. Syscalls with ERESTART* return values are restarted in case of the fake signal (see do_signal()). EINTR is propagated back to the userspace program. This could disturb the program, but... * each process dealing with signals should react accordingly to EINTR return values. * syscalls returning EINTR happen to be quite common situation in the system even if no fake signal is sent. * freezer sends the fake signal and does not deal with EINTR anyhow. Thus EINTR values are returned when the system is resumed. The very safe marking is done in architectures' "entry" on syscall and interrupt/exception exit paths, and in a stack checking functions of livepatch. TIF_PATCH_PENDING is cleared and the next recalc_sigpending() drops TIF_SIGPENDING. In connection with this, also call klp_update_patch_state() before do_signal(), so that recalc_sigpending() in dequeue_signal() can clear TIF_PATCH_PENDING immediately and thus prevent a double call of do_signal(). Note that the fake signal is not sent to stopped/traced tasks. Such task prevents the patching to finish till it continues again (is not traced anymore). Last, sending the fake signal is not automatic. It is done only when admin requests it by writing 1 to signal sysfs attribute in livepatch sysfs directory. Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com> Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com> Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com> Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org> Cc: linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org Cc: x86@kernel.org Acked-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au> (powerpc) Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2017-03-08livepatch: allow removal of a disabled patchJosh Poimboeuf1-19/+9
Currently we do not allow patch module to unload since there is no method to determine if a task is still running in the patched code. The consistency model gives us the way because when the unpatching finishes we know that all tasks were marked as safe to call an original function. Thus every new call to the function calls the original code and at the same time no task can be somewhere in the patched code, because it had to leave that code to be marked as safe. We can safely let the patch module go after that. Completion is used for synchronization between module removal and sysfs infrastructure in a similar way to commit 942e443127e9 ("module: Fix mod->mkobj.kobj potentially freed too early"). Note that we still do not allow the removal for immediate model, that is no consistency model. The module refcount may increase in this case if somebody disables and enables the patch several times. This should not cause any harm. With this change a call to try_module_get() is moved to __klp_enable_patch from klp_register_patch to make module reference counting symmetric (module_put() is in a patch disable path) and to allow to take a new reference to a disabled module when being enabled. Finally, we need to be very careful about possible races between klp_unregister_patch(), kobject_put() functions and operations on the related sysfs files. kobject_put(&patch->kobj) must be called without klp_mutex. Otherwise, it might be blocked by enabled_store() that needs the mutex as well. In addition, enabled_store() must check if the patch was not unregisted in the meantime. There is no need to do the same for other kobject_put() callsites at the moment. Their sysfs operations neither take the lock nor they access any data that might be freed in the meantime. There was an attempt to use kobjects the right way and prevent these races by design. But it made the patch definition more complicated and opened another can of worms. See https://lkml.kernel.org/r/1464018848-4303-1-git-send-email-pmladek@suse.com [Thanks to Petr Mladek for improving the commit message.] Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com> Acked-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2017-03-08livepatch: change to a per-task consistency modelJosh Poimboeuf1-23/+163
Change livepatch to use a basic per-task consistency model. This is the foundation which will eventually enable us to patch those ~10% of security patches which change function or data semantics. This is the biggest remaining piece needed to make livepatch more generally useful. This code stems from the design proposal made by Vojtech [1] in November 2014. It's a hybrid of kGraft and kpatch: it uses kGraft's per-task consistency and syscall barrier switching combined with kpatch's stack trace switching. There are also a number of fallback options which make it quite flexible. Patches are applied on a per-task basis, when the task is deemed safe to switch over. When a patch is enabled, livepatch enters into a transition state where tasks are converging to the patched state. Usually this transition state can complete in a few seconds. The same sequence occurs when a patch is disabled, except the tasks converge from the patched state to the unpatched state. An interrupt handler inherits the patched state of the task it interrupts. The same is true for forked tasks: the child inherits the patched state of the parent. Livepatch uses several complementary approaches to determine when it's safe to patch tasks: 1. The first and most effective approach is stack checking of sleeping tasks. If no affected functions are on the stack of a given task, the task is patched. In most cases this will patch most or all of the tasks on the first try. Otherwise it'll keep trying periodically. This option is only available if the architecture has reliable stacks (HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE). 2. The second approach, if needed, is kernel exit switching. A task is switched when it returns to user space from a system call, a user space IRQ, or a signal. It's useful in the following cases: a) Patching I/O-bound user tasks which are sleeping on an affected function. In this case you have to send SIGSTOP and SIGCONT to force it to exit the kernel and be patched. b) Patching CPU-bound user tasks. If the task is highly CPU-bound then it will get patched the next time it gets interrupted by an IRQ. c) In the future it could be useful for applying patches for architectures which don't yet have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE. In this case you would have to signal most of the tasks on the system. However this isn't supported yet because there's currently no way to patch kthreads without HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE. 3. For idle "swapper" tasks, since they don't ever exit the kernel, they instead have a klp_update_patch_state() call in the idle loop which allows them to be patched before the CPU enters the idle state. (Note there's not yet such an approach for kthreads.) All the above approaches may be skipped by setting the 'immediate' flag in the 'klp_patch' struct, which will disable per-task consistency and patch all tasks immediately. This can be useful if the patch doesn't change any function or data semantics. Note that, even with this flag set, it's possible that some tasks may still be running with an old version of the function, until that function returns. There's also an 'immediate' flag in the 'klp_func' struct which allows you to specify that certain functions in the patch can be applied without per-task consistency. This might be useful if you want to patch a common function like schedule(), and the function change doesn't need consistency but the rest of the patch does. For architectures which don't have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE, the user must set patch->immediate which causes all tasks to be patched immediately. This option should be used with care, only when the patch doesn't change any function or data semantics. In the future, architectures which don't have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE may be allowed to use per-task consistency if we can come up with another way to patch kthreads. The /sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/transition file shows whether a patch is in transition. Only a single patch (the topmost patch on the stack) can be in transition at a given time. A patch can remain in transition indefinitely, if any of the tasks are stuck in the initial patch state. A transition can be reversed and effectively canceled by writing the opposite value to the /sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/enabled file while the transition is in progress. Then all the tasks will attempt to converge back to the original patch state. [1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20141107140458.GA21774@suse.cz Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> Acked-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> # for the scheduler changes Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2017-02-23Merge tag 'docs-4.11' of git://git.lwn.net/linuxLinus Torvalds1-1/+1
Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet: "A slightly quieter cycle for documentation this time around. Three more DocBook template files have been converted to RST; only 21 to go. There are various build improvements and the usual array of documentation improvements and fixes" * tag 'docs-4.11' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (44 commits) docs / driver-api: Fix structure references in device_link.rst PM / docs: Fix structure references in device.rst Add a target to check broken external links in the Documentation Documentation: Fix linux-api list typo Documentation: DocBook/Makefile comment typo Improve sparse documentation Documentation: make Makefile.sphinx no-ops quieter Documentation: DMA-ISA-LPC.txt Documentation: input: fix path to input code definitions docs: Remove the copyright year from conf.py docs: Fix a warning in the Korean HOWTO.rst translation PM / sleep / docs: Convert PM notifiers document to reST PM / core / docs: Convert sleep states API document to reST PM / core: Update kerneldoc comments in pm.h doc-rst: Fix recursive make invocation from macros doc-rst: Delete output of failed dot-SVG conversion doc-rst: Break shell command sequences on failure Documentation/sphinx: make targets independent of Sphinx work for HAVE_SPHINX=0 doc-rst: fixed cleandoc target when used with O=dir Documentation/sphinx: prevent generation of .pyc files in the source tree ...
2017-01-27Doc: Fix double words in DocumentationMasanari Iida1-1/+1
This patch fix some double words found in Documentation. Signed-off-by: Masanari Iida <standby24x7@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
2017-01-11livepatch: doc: remove the limitation for schedule() patchingMiroslav Benes1-19/+0
The Limitations section of the documentation describes the impossibility to livepatch anything that is inlined to __schedule() function. This had been true till 4.9 kernel came. Thanks to commit 0100301bfdf5 ("sched/x86: Rewrite the switch_to() code") from Brian Gerst there is __switch_to_asm function now (implemented in assembly) called properly from context_switch(). RIP is thus saved on the stack and a task would return to proper version of __schedule() et al. functions. Of course __switch_to_asm() is not patchable for the reason described in the section. But there is no __fentry__ call and I cannot imagine a reason to do it anyway. Therefore, remove the paragraphs from the section. Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz> Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com> Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2016-12-09Documentation/livepatch: Fix stale link to gmamePetr Mladek1-1/+1
gmame archive does not longer exist. Use the message id and generic redirector instead. Reported-by: John Donnelly <john.donnelly@canonical.com> Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>
2016-04-27livepatch: Add some basic livepatch documentationPetr Mladek1-0/+394
livepatch framework deserves some documentation, definitely. This is an attempt to provide some basic info. I hope that it will be useful for both LivePatch producers and also potential developers of the framework itself. [jkosina@suse.cz: - incorporated feedback (grammar fixes) from Chris J Arges <chris.j.arges@canonical.com> - s/LivePatch/livepatch in changelog as pointed out by Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> - incorporated part of feedback (grammar fixes / reformulations) from Balbir Singh <bsingharora@gmail.com> ] Acked-by: Jessica Yu <jeyu@redhat.com> Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com> Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>