Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] xen/arm: fix rank/vgic locks inversion bug

[Julien Grall <julien.grall@xxxxxxx>]

Hi Stefano,

On 15/12/2016 01:04, Stefano Stabellini wrote:
> The locking order is: first rank lock, then vgic lock. The order is
> respected everywhere, except for gic_update_one_lr.
>
> gic_update_one_lr is called with the vgic lock held, but it calls
> vgic_get_target_vcpu, which tries to obtain the rank lock. This can
> cause deadlocks.
>
> We already have a version of vgic_get_target_vcpu that doesn't take the
> rank lock: __vgic_get_target_vcpu. Also the only routine that modify
> the target vcpu are vgic_store_itargetsr and vgic_store_irouter. They
> call vgic_migrate_irq, which already take the vgic lock.
>
> Solve the lock inversion problem, by not taking the rank lock in
> gic_update_one_lr (calling __vgic_get_target_vcpu instead of
> vgic_get_target_vcpu).
If I look at the callers of gic_update_one_lr, the function 
gic_clear_lrs will not take the rank lock. So from my understanding 
nobody will take the rank here.
However __vgic_get_target_vcpu has an ASSERT to check whether the rank 
lock has been taken. So who is taking lock for gic_update_one_lr now?
 We make this safe, by placing modifications to
> rank->vcpu within regions protected by the vgic lock.
This look unsafe to me. The vgic lock is per-vcpu, but rank->vcpu could 
be written/read by any vCPU. So you will never protect rank->vcpu with 
this lock. Did I miss anything?
> Signed-off-by: Stefano Stabellini <sstabellini@xxxxxxxxxx>
>
> ---
> There are supposed to be 2 Coverity IDs associated with this, but the
> system the currently down.
I think the 2 Coverity IDs are 1381855 and 1381853.

Cheers,

--
Julien Grall

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