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drivers:tty:pty: Fix a race causing data loss on close
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Remove the tty_vhangup() from the pty code and just release the
redirect.  The tty_vhangup() results in data loss and data out of order
issues.

If you write to a pty master an immediately close the pty master, the
receiver might get a chunk of data dropped, but then receive some later
data.  That's obviously something rather unexpected for a user.  It
certainly confused my test program.

It turns out that tty_vhangup() on the slave pty gets called from
pty_close(), and that causes the data on the slave side to be flushed,
but due to races more data can be copied into the slave side's buffer
after that.  Consider the following sequence:

thread1          thread2         thread3
-------          -------         -------
 |                |-write data into buffer,
 |                | n_tty buffer is filled
 |                | along with other buffers
 |                |-pty_close(master)
 |                |--tty_vhangup(slave)
 |                |---tty_ldisc_hangup()
 |                |----n_tty_flush_buffer()
 |                |-----reset_buffer_flags()
 |-n_tty_read()   |
 |--up_read(&tty->termios_rwsem);
 |                |------down_read(&tty->termios_rwsem)
 |                |------clear n_tty buffer contents
 |                |------up_read(&tty->termios_rwsem)
 |--tty_buffer_flush_work()       |
 |--schedules work calling        |
 |  flush_to_ldisc()              |
 |                                |-flush_to_ldisc()
 |                                |--receive_buf()
 |                                |---tty_port_default_receive_buf()
 |                                |----tty_ldisc_receive_buf()
 |                                |-----n_tty_receive_buf2()
 |                                |------n_tty_receive_buf_common()
 |                                |-------down_read(&tty->termios_rwsem)
 |                                |-------__receive_buf()
 |                                |       copies data into n_tty buffer
 |                                |-------up_read(&tty->termios_rwsem)
 |--down_read(&tty->termios_rwsem)
 |--copy buffer data to user

>From this sequence, you can see that thread2 writes to the buffer then
only clears the part of the buffer in n_tty.  The n_tty receive buffer
code then copies more data into the n_tty buffer.

But part of the vhangup, releasing the redirect, is still required to
avoid issues with consoles running on pty slaves.  So do that.
As far as I can tell, that is all that should be required.

Signed-off-by: Corey Minyard <[email protected]>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <[email protected]>
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cminyard authored and gregkh committed Jan 7, 2021
1 parent f446776 commit 33d4ae9
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Showing 2 changed files with 16 additions and 4 deletions.
15 changes: 13 additions & 2 deletions drivers/tty/pty.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -66,7 +66,8 @@ static void pty_close(struct tty_struct *tty, struct file *filp)
wake_up_interruptible(&tty->link->read_wait);
wake_up_interruptible(&tty->link->write_wait);
if (tty->driver->subtype == PTY_TYPE_MASTER) {
set_bit(TTY_OTHER_CLOSED, &tty->flags);
struct file *f;

#ifdef CONFIG_UNIX98_PTYS
if (tty->driver == ptm_driver) {
mutex_lock(&devpts_mutex);
Expand All @@ -75,7 +76,17 @@ static void pty_close(struct tty_struct *tty, struct file *filp)
mutex_unlock(&devpts_mutex);
}
#endif
tty_vhangup(tty->link);

/*
* This hack is required because a program can open a
* pty and redirect a console to it, but if the pty is
* closed and the console is not released, then the
* slave side will never close. So release the
* redirect when the master closes.
*/
f = tty_release_redirect(tty->link);
if (f)
fput(f);
}
}

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5 changes: 3 additions & 2 deletions drivers/tty/tty_io.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -545,7 +545,9 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(tty_wakeup);
* @tty: tty device
*
* This is available to the pty code so if the master closes, if the
* slave is a redirect it can release the redirect.
* slave is a redirect it can release the redirect. It returns the
* filp for the redirect, which must be fput when the operations on
* the tty are completed.
*/
struct file *tty_release_redirect(struct tty_struct *tty)
{
Expand All @@ -560,7 +562,6 @@ struct file *tty_release_redirect(struct tty_struct *tty)

return f;
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(tty_release_redirect);

/**
* __tty_hangup - actual handler for hangup events
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