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| From: | Max Reitz |
| Subject: | Re: Thread safety of coroutine-sigaltstack |
| Date: | Thu, 21 Jan 2021 16:42:09 +0100 |
| User-agent: | Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.5.0 |
On 21.01.21 14:34, Laszlo Ersek wrote:
On 01/21/21 10:27, Max Reitz wrote:On 20.01.21 18:25, Laszlo Ersek wrote:On 01/20/21 17:26, Max Reitz wrote:Hi, I’ve run into trouble with Vladimir’s async backup series on MacOS, namely that iotest 256 fails with qemu exiting because of a SIGUSR2. Turns out this is because MacOS (-xcode) uses coroutine-sigaltstack, when I use this on Linux, I get the same error. (You can find the series applied on my block branch e.g. here: https://github.com/XanClic/qemu.git block ) Some debugging later I found that the problem seems to be two threads simultaneously creating a coroutine. It makes sense that this case would appear with Vladimir’s series and iotest 256, because 256 runs two backup jobs in two different threads in a transaction, i.e. they’re launched simultaneously. The async backup series makes backup use many concurrent coroutines and so by default launches 64+x coroutines when the backup is started. Thus, the case of two coroutines created concurrently in two threads is very likely to occur. I think the problem is in coroutine-sigaltstack’s qemu_coroutine_new(). It sets up a SIGUSR2 handler, then changes the signal handling stack, then raises SIGUSR2, then reverts the signal handling stack and the SIGUSR2 handler. As far as I’m aware, setting up signal handlers and changing the signal handling stack are both process-global operations, and so if two threads do so concurrently, they will interfere with each other.Signal action (disposition) is process-wide. Signal mask and signal stack are thread-specific.Ah, OK. Thanks for the insight!A signal may be pending for the whole process, or for a specific thread. In the former case, the signal is delivered to one of the threads that are not blocking the signal.What usually happens is that one thread sets up everything, while the other is already in the process of reverting its changes: So the second thread reverts the SIGUSR2 handler to the default, and then the first thread raises SIGUSR2, thus making qemu exit.I agree. The way SIGUSR2 is blocked (for the thread), made pending (for the thread), and then allowed to be delivered (consequently, to the thread), looks OK. But by the time it is delivered, the action has been changed.(Could be worse though. Both threads could set up the sigaltstack, then both raise SIGUSR2, and then we get one coroutine_trampoline() invocation in each thread, but both would use the same stack. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen, presumably because the race time window is much shorter.)No, the "alternate stack for signal handlers" that sigaltstack() configures is thread-specific. (I mean one could theoretically mess it up if the stack were located in the same place between different threads, but we call qemu_alloc_stack(), so that doesn't happen.) https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/sigaltstack.htmlExplains why I haven’t seen it. :)Now, this all seems obvious to me, but I’m wondering... If coroutine-sigaltstack really couldn’t create coroutines concurrently, why wouldn’t we have noticed before? I mean, this new backup case is kind of a stress test, yes, but surely we would have seen the problem already, right? That’s why I’m not sure whether my analysis is correct. Anyway, I’ve attached a patch that wraps the whole SIGUSR2 handling section in a mutex, and that makes 256 pass reliably with Vladimir’s async backup series. Besides being unsure whether the problem is really in coroutine-sigaltstack, I also don’t know whether getting out the big guns and wrapping everything in the mutex is the best solution. So, it’s an RFC, I guess.A simple grep for SIGUSR2 seems to indicate that SIGUSR2 is not used by system emulation for anything else, in practice. Is it possible to dedicate SIGUSR2 explicitly to coroutine-sigaltstack, and set up the action beforehand, from some init function that executes on a "central" thread, before qemu_coroutine_new() is ever called?Doesn’t sound unreasonable, but wouldn’t the signal handler then have to check whether the SIGUSR2 comes from coroutine-sigaltstack or from the outside? Or should we then keep SIGUSR2 blocked all the time?Blocking SIGUSR2 in all threads at all times, except when temporarily unblocking it with sigsuspend(), is one approach, but I don't think it would necessarily be 100% safe against other processes sending SIGUSR2 asynchronously. And IMO that's not even a goal -- sending a signal requires permission: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/functions/kill.html For a process to have permission to send a signal to a process designated by pid, unless the sending process has appropriate privileges, the real or effective user ID of the sending process shall match the real or saved set-user-ID of the receiving process. (I assume (hope) that SELinux / sVirt further restricts this, so one qemu process couldn't simply signal another, due to their different labels.) Thus, when the host kernel permits a different process to generate SIGUSR2 for QEMU, it's OK to let things just crash and burn. Every other process with such a permission should *know better* than to send an unsolicited SIGUSR2 to QEMU. I mean, what happens if you send an external SIGUSR2 to QEMU right now? The default action for SIGUSR2 is to terminate the process: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/signal.h.html
I had the same thought (if you can send SIGUSR2, you can send SIGKILL), but terminating the process is one thing; redirecting control flow to a signal handler that has not been audited for what happens when it is invoked from an actual signal from the outside is another.
... I've tried to see if POSIX says anything on signals being delivered with mutexen held. I can't find anything specific (the spec seems to talk about delivery of a signal while the thread waits in pthread_mutex_lock(), but that's not what we care about, here). I'm just somewhat uncomfortable with bracketing this whole hackery into a mutex even... Keeping sigaction() out of the picture could be a small performance benefit, too.Speaking of signal being delivered in the mutexed section... What would happen if we get an external signal after SIGUSR2 was delivered and coroutine_trampoline() set up the sigsetjmp(), but before the stack is switched back? Wouldn’t this new signal then trash the stack? Should we block all signals while using the alternate stack? (Looking at the x64 objdump, the stack actually seems to be used to store @self across sigsetjmp().)I wouldn't worry about it. Signals are a crude interface for programs. If a program documents that a particular signal can be sent to it for a particular purpose (which implies the asynchronous generation of that signal of course), then processes that have proper permission to send that signal are *welcome* to send that signal at *any* time. If the program mishandles the signal, that's a bug in the signalee. Conversely, if a signal is not documented like that by the program, but another process (having the needed permission) still sends the signal, breakage is expected, and the signaler process is at fault. In my book, it's no different from sending a signal that is simply neither caught nor ignored nor blocked by the signalee process, and whose default disposition is to terminate the process (marked "T" or "A" in the table linked above). E.g., if you send a SIGILL to a process out of the blue, the process is totally expected to blow up, or at least to misbehave.
I don’t really understand. If you send any handled signal (like SIGINT) to a thread that has the alternate stack set up, the coroutine trampoline stack is thrashed (I think), and while I haven’t investigated it, I would expect undefined behavior on siglongjmp(). I find that much worse than terminating.
Giving a process A the permission to send signals to a process B usually does not automatically allow A to induce undefined behavior in B. (And the breakage you get when someone violates a protocol should never be undefined behavior.)
Perhaps we have the policy of “If another process can send signals, then we consider it to have full control over qemu, like a debugger.” Then that’s OK. Otherwise, I don’t find it OK.
In any case, this question of what other signals do while the alternate stack is up is a separate problem from the original one, so we can look at one after the other.
The logic in the patch doesn't look broken, but the comments should be updated minimally -- the signal stack is thread-specific (similarly to how a thread has its own stack anyway, regardless of signals).Sure, I can do that. I agree that there probably are better solutions than to wrap everything in a lock. OTOH, it looks to me like this lock is the most simple solution. If Daniel is right[1] and we should drop coroutine-sigaltstack altogether (at some point...), perhaps it is best to go for the most simple solution now. [1] https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-block/2021-01/msg00808.htmlSUSv3 marked ucontext functions obsolescent: https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/functions/makecontext.html#tag_03_356_08 and they are entirely missing from SUSv4 (aka the latest POSIX): https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/xrat/V4_xsh_chap03.html#tag_22_03_01_07 So you can use ucontext if you #define _XOPEN_SOURCE as 500 or 600, but (in theory) not if you #define it as 700. How this works out in practice on OSX -- i.e. how long they intend to support _XOPEN_SOURCE 600 --, I can't tell.
Daniel made it sound like there was a libucontext that might be the way to go forward.
I don't disagree with Daniel though; you can always bring back coroutine-sigaltstack from the git history, if Apple decides to drop ucontext.
It may be a bit more hassle (the configure option has to be removed, then maybe readded), but, well, yes.
If you went for the mutex for the time being, I wouldn't try to nack it. :)
Hm. OK. Doesn’t sound too bad. ;) Max
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