Re: [RFC PATCH 2/3] usbnet: Avoid potential races in usbnet_deferred_kevent()

Hi,

On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 1:37 PM, Oliver Neukum [off-list ref] wrote:

Am Dienstag, den 19.09.2017, 09:15 -0700 schrieb Douglas Anderson:

quoted

In general when you've got a flag communicating that "something needs
to be done" you want to clear that flag _before_ doing the task.  If
you clear the flag _after_ doing the task you end up with the risk
that this will happen:

1. Requester sets flag saying task A needs to be done.
2. Worker comes and stars doing task A.
3. Worker finishes task A but hasn't yet cleared the flag.
4. Requester wants to set flag saying task A needs to be done again.
5. Worker clears the flag without doing anything.

Let's make the usbnet codebase consistently clear the flag _before_ it
does the requested work.  That way if there's another request to do
the work while the work is already in progress it won't be lost.

NOTES:
- No known bugs are fixed by this; it's just found by code inspection.

Hi,

unfortunately the patch is wrong. The flags must be cleared only
in case the handler is successful. That is not guaranteed.

        Regards
                Oliver

NACK

OK, thanks for reviewing!  I definitely wasn't super confident about
the patch (hence the RFC).

Do you think that the races I identified are possible to hit?  In
other words: should I try to rework the patch somehow or just drop it?
 Originally I had the patch setting the flags back to true in the
failure cases, but then I convinced myself that wasn't needed.  I can
certainly go back and try it that way...

-Doug