Re: [PATCH next-next 0/4] rtnetlink: rework handler (un)registering

From: Florian Westphal <fw@strlen.de>
Date: Sat,  2 Dec 2017 21:44:04 +0100

Peter Zijlstra reported (referring to commit 019a316992ee0d983,
"rtnetlink: add reference counting to prevent module unload while dump is in progress"):

 1) it not in fact a refcount, so using refcount_t is silly
 2) there is a distinct lack of memory barriers, so we can easily
    observe the decrement while the msg_handler is still in progress.
 3) waiting with a schedule()/yield() loop is complete crap and subject
    life-locks, imagine doing that rtnl_unregister_all() from a RT task.

In ancient times rtnetlink exposed a statically-sized table with
preset doit/dumpit handlers to be called for a protocol/type pair.

Later the rtnl_register interface was added and the table was allocated
on demand.  Eventually these were also used by modules.

Problem is that nothing prevents module unload while a netlink dump
is in progress.  netlink dumps can be span multiple recv calls and
netlink core saves the to-be-repeated dumper address for later invocation.

To prevent rmmod the netlink core expects callers to pass in the owning
module so a reference can be taken.

So far rtnetlink wasn't doing this, add new interface to pass THIS_MODULE.
Moreover, when converting parts of the rtnetlink handling to rcu this code
gained way too many READ_ONCE spots, remove them and the extra refcounting.

Take a module reference when running dumpit and doit callbacks
and never alter content of rtnl_link structures after they have been
published via rcu_assign_pointer.

Based partially on earlier patch from Peter.

Series applied, thanks Florian.

BTW, why did you use rtnl_register_module() for most of ipv6 but
specifically not for the net/ipv6/addrconf.c stuff?

Just curious.