Bug 2644 - Race condition during unwind code after thread cancellation
Summary: Race condition during unwind code after thread cancellation
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: glibc
Classification: Unclassified
Component: nptl (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ulrich Drepper
URL:
Keywords:
: 3597 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2006-05-07 13:56 UTC by Neil Campbell
Modified: 2016-05-08 14:05 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:
Host: i686-redhat-linux
Target: i686-redhat-linux
Build: i686-redhat-linux
Last reconfirmed:
fweimer: security-


Attachments
Patch to make the unwind function pointers volatile. (445 bytes, patch)
2006-05-07 14:01 UTC, Neil Campbell
Details | Diff
Test case which shows the problem (567 bytes, text/plain)
2006-05-07 14:04 UTC, Neil Campbell
Details
Patch to force reload of the pointers only when required (540 bytes, patch)
2006-05-07 22:15 UTC, Neil Campbell
Details | Diff

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Description Neil Campbell 2006-05-07 13:56:30 UTC
I think there is a race condition in the code in
nptl/sysdeps/pthread/unwind-forcedunwind.c which can lead to a segfault.  I
found this in a redhat build, but it exists in CVS glibc too (as of May 6 2006).

Consider a call to _Unwind_ForcedUnwind, when libgcc_s_forcedunwind has not been
loaded.  _Unwind_ForcedUnwind checks the value against null, and jumps to
pthread_cancel_init.  Meanwhile another thread comes in and initialises all
these pointers, so the first check in pthread_cancel_init shows that
libgcc_s_getcfa is non-null, so we return to _Unwind_ForcedUnwind and execute
libgcc_s_forcedunwind.  As the function pointer libgcc_s_forcedunwind has not
been marked volatile, the compiler does not need to reload this value, and
attempts to call the address it previously loaded, ie. 0.

I have a test case which shows the problem and patch which I believe fixes it.
Comment 1 Neil Campbell 2006-05-07 14:01:55 UTC
Created attachment 1004 [details]
Patch to make the unwind function pointers volatile.

I think this patch fixes the bug.  It's a little ugly because I wasn't sure of
the syntax for making the function pointers volatile.
Comment 2 Neil Campbell 2006-05-07 14:04:59 UTC
Created attachment 1005 [details]
Test case which shows the problem

This test shows the bug for me on an 8 way xeon.  I run it with the following
command:

for i in `seq 0 100 10000`; do echo $i; for j in `seq 1 100`; do
./pthread_exit_race; done; done

and eventually I get some segs:

0
100
received segv!
received segv!
200
...

I built the test with g++ pthread_exit_race.cc -o pthread_exit_race -lpthread
-DMAXTHREADS=100
Comment 3 Neil Campbell 2006-05-07 14:14:30 UTC
To clarify how the problem manifests, here's a snippet of the compiled
_Unwind_ForcedUnwind code from the unpatched libc:

00941360 <_Unwind_ForcedUnwind>:
[...]
  941377:       8b 93 ac 21 00 00       mov    0x21ac(%ebx),%edx
  94137d:       89 7d fc                mov    %edi,0xfffffffc(%ebp)
  941380:       85 d2                   test   %edx,%edx
  941382:       74 23                   je     9413a7 
  941384:       8b 75 10                mov    0x10(%ebp),%esi
  941387:       8b 4d 0c                mov    0xc(%ebp),%ecx
  94138a:       8b 45 08                mov    0x8(%ebp),%eax
  94138d:       89 74 24 08             mov    %esi,0x8(%esp)
  941391:       89 4c 24 04             mov    %ecx,0x4(%esp)
  941395:       89 04 24                mov    %eax,(%esp)
  941398:       ff d2                   call   *%edx
[...]
  9413a6:       c3                      ret
  9413a7:       8b 83 b0 21 00 00       mov    0x21b0(%ebx),%eax
  9413ad:       85 c0                   test   %eax,%eax
  9413af:       75 d3                   jne    941384

If the test at 941380 shows that edx (which is libgcc_s_forcedunwind) contains
0, and the test at 9413ad shows that eax (libgcc_s_getcfa) is non-zero, we jump
back to 941384 and try to call edx without having changed it from 0.

After patching and rebuilding on my system the following code results:

0000c360 <_Unwind_ForcedUnwind>:
[...]
    c377:       8b 83 ac 21 00 00       mov    0x21ac(%ebx),%eax
    c37d:       89 7d fc                mov    %edi,0xfffffffc(%ebp)
    c380:       85 c0                   test   %eax,%eax
    c382:       74 29                   je     c3ad <_Unwind_ForcedUnwind+0x4d>
    c384:       8b 7d 10                mov    0x10(%ebp),%edi
    c387:       8b 75 0c                mov    0xc(%ebp),%esi
    c38a:       8b 4d 08                mov    0x8(%ebp),%ecx
    c38d:       89 7c 24 08             mov    %edi,0x8(%esp)
    c391:       8b 83 ac 21 00 00       mov    0x21ac(%ebx),%eax
    c397:       89 74 24 04             mov    %esi,0x4(%esp)
    c39b:       89 0c 24                mov    %ecx,(%esp)
    c39e:       ff d0                   call   *%eax
[...]
    c3ac:       c3                      ret
    c3ad:       8b 93 b0 21 00 00       mov    0x21b0(%ebx),%edx
    c3b3:       85 d2                   test   %edx,%edx
    c3b5:       75 cd                   jne    c384 <_Unwind_ForcedUnwind+0x24>

In this case eax is used for libgcc_s_forcedunwind, and after returning from the
(inlined) pthread_cancel_init we now reload eax at c391 before calling it.

This bug seems to exist in current CVS and could probably affect most platforms.
 I've searched for any previous reports and the closest I got was the patch
proposed in http://sourceware.org/ml/libc-hacker/2005-11/msg00010.html, which
fixes a different problem with the same code.

I can provide more details of compiler versions etc if required.
Comment 4 Ulrich Drepper 2006-05-07 17:32:38 UTC
What compiler do you use?  Mine doesn't generate this code.

Anyway, this is a pretty heavy handed solution.  It forces the compiler to load
the value twice while in fact you only want to reload when pthread_cancel_init
was called.

Instead, try replacing each call of pthread_cancel_init with an approriate call like

  {
    pthread_cancel_init ();
    asm volatile ("" : "=m" (libgcc_s_result));
  }
Comment 5 Neil Campbell 2006-05-07 18:37:38 UTC
Thanks for the quick response.  Your solution does sound better, I'm just
rebuilding to check that it works as expected.

The compiler I'm using is GCC 3.4.3; to be precise, it's version 3.4.3 20041212
(Red Hat 3.4.3-9.EL4).  If it's of any use, the first piece of code I quoted
matches that from the libpthread.so.0 that comes from the glibc-2.3.4-2 package
on Red Hat EL 4.

I'm building with rpmbuild at the moment, but from what I can tell the CFLAGS
are set to '-march=i686 -DNDEBUG=1 -g -O3'.  Please let me know if you need more
details on the configuration.

It seems to me that although not all compilers necessarily will plant code that
is unsafe, it is at least valid for them to do so from the current source.
Comment 6 Neil Campbell 2006-05-07 22:15:08 UTC
Created attachment 1006 [details]
Patch to force reload of the pointers only when required

As discussed, this patch forces the function pointers to be reloaded when
required, without needing them all to marked as volatile.  I've used the '+'
modifier in the asm, when I used '=' gcc decided to dead-code one of the stores
and everything broke.
Comment 7 Neil Campbell 2006-05-07 22:19:24 UTC
For completeness, here's the compiler output for the new patched version:

0000c360 <_Unwind_ForcedUnwind>:
[...]
    c377:       8b 93 ac 21 00 00       mov    0x21ac(%ebx),%edx
    c37d:       89 7d fc                mov    %edi,0xfffffffc(%ebp)
    c380:       85 d2                   test   %edx,%edx
    c382:       74 23                   je     c3a7 <_Unwind_ForcedUnwind+0x47>
    c384:       8b 75 10                mov    0x10(%ebp),%esi
    c387:       8b 4d 0c                mov    0xc(%ebp),%ecx
    c38a:       8b 45 08                mov    0x8(%ebp),%eax
    c38d:       89 74 24 08             mov    %esi,0x8(%esp)
    c391:       89 4c 24 04             mov    %ecx,0x4(%esp)
    c395:       89 04 24                mov    %eax,(%esp)
    c398:       ff d2                   call   *%edx
[...]
    c3a6:       c3                      ret
    c3a7:       8b 83 b0 21 00 00       mov    0x21b0(%ebx),%eax
    c3ad:       85 c0                   test   %eax,%eax
    c3af:       74 08                   je     c3b9 <_Unwind_ForcedUnwind+0x59>
    c3b1:       8b 93 ac 21 00 00       mov    0x21ac(%ebx),%edx
    c3b7:       eb cb                   jmp    c384 <_Unwind_ForcedUnwind+0x24>

The common case is now just as it was before, but in the case where we have to
do the initialisation the value is correctly loaded at c3b1.

I haven't finished testing with this version, but it looks good so far.
Comment 8 Ulrich Drepper 2006-05-08 01:00:31 UTC
I checked in the patch.

(Next time, change the state from WAITING when you add comments.)
Comment 9 Neil Campbell 2006-05-08 09:36:03 UTC
(In reply to comment #8)
> I checked in the patch.

Thank you!

> (Next time, change the state from WAITING when you add comments.)

Sorry, will do.
Comment 10 Jakub Jelinek 2006-05-08 11:27:53 UTC
I think instead of the patch you checked in we should just mark
pthread_cancel_init with __attribute__((noinline)).  That will do everything
that's needed and is desirable anyway.
Comment 11 Jakub Jelinek 2006-11-28 10:31:35 UTC
*** Bug 3597 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 12 Abdullah Muzahid 2011-07-22 22:52:50 UTC
Hi,
I am a phd student in University of Illinois in CS dept. Recently I have been
working on memory model related bugs in software. I was experimenting with this
bug. And I found out that the bug is not properly fixed. pthread_cancel_init() uses libgcc_s_getcfa as a flag. To make it work, we need to use 2 barrier - one before writing into libgcc_s_getcfa and one after reading it in line 40 (just before returning). The fix puts the first barrier but not the second one. Now consider the following scenario where Thread 1 in inside pthread_cancel_init and is actually initializing the pointers. Thread 2 is in _Unwind_Resume, finds libgcc_s_resume to be NULL and calls the init function.
     Thread 1                                 Thread 2
libgcc_s_resume = resume;      if(__builtin_expect(libgcc_s_getcfa != NULL,1)) 
...                            ...
atomic_write_barrier();
libgcc_s_getcfa = getcfa;      libgcc_s_resume(exc);

Now in Power-PC memory model, it is perfectly valid to execute read operations
to different addresses out of order as long as there is no barrier in between
them. Although thread 2 issues the instructions in order, it is possible that
the second read (i.e. reading of the pointer libgcc_s_resume) will execute before the first read of libgcc_s_getcfa. This is shown here.

     Thread 1                             Thread 2
                                 libgcc_s_resume(exc);
libgcc_s_resume = resume;
...
atomic_write_barrier();
libgcc_s_getcfa = getcfa;            
                                 if(__builtin_expect(libgcc_s_getcfa != NULL,1))

As a result, although the condition of the if statement for thread 2 becomes 
true, it will end up using NULL value for libgcc_s_resume. This will crash the program. So, you need to put a read_barrier after reading libgcc_s_getcfa in the if statement (i.e at line 42 before returning from pthread_cancel_init). This pattern is very similar to double checked locking (DCL) which also requires 2 barrier to make it work. More on DCL can be found here
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~pugh/java/memoryModel/DoubleCheckedLocking.html
Thanks.
-Abdullah Muzahid
 PhD Student
 CS, UIUC
Comment 13 Ulrich Drepper 2011-07-23 03:49:40 UTC
I added some patches and don't reopen bugs.
Comment 14 Jackie Rosen 2014-02-16 16:56:23 UTC Comment hidden (spam)