Skip to content
  • Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)'s avatar
    pipe: relocate round_pipe_size() above pipe_set_size() · f491bd71
    Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) authored
    Patch series "pipe: fix limit handling", v2.
    
    When changing a pipe's capacity with fcntl(F_SETPIPE_SZ), various limits
    defined by /proc/sys/fs/pipe-* files are checked to see if unprivileged
    users are exceeding limits on memory consumption.
    
    While documenting and testing the operation of these limits I noticed
    that, as currently implemented, these checks have a number of problems:
    
    (1) When increasing the pipe capacity, the checks against the limits
        in /proc/sys/fs/pipe-user-pages-{soft,hard} are made against
        existing consumption, and exclude the memory required for the
        increased pipe capacity. The new increase in pipe capacity can then
        push the total memory used by the user for pipes (possibly far) over
        a limit. This can also trigger the problem described next.
    
    (2) The limit checks are performed even when the new pipe capacity
        is less than the existing pipe capacity. This can lead to problems
        if a user sets a large pipe capacity, and then the limits are
        lowered, with the result that the user will no longer be able to
        decrease the pipe capacity.
    
    (3) As currently implemented, accounting and checking against the
        limits is done as follows:
    
        (a) Test whether the user has exceeded the limit.
        (b) Make new pipe buffer allocation.
        (c) Account new allocation against the limits.
    
        This is racey. Multiple processes may pass point (a) simultaneously,
        and then allocate pipe buffers that are accounted for only in step
        (c).  The race means that the user's pipe buffer allocation could be
        pushed over the limit (by an arbitrary amount, depending on how
        unlucky we were in the race). [Thanks to Vegard Nossum for spotting
        this point, which I had missed.]
    
    This patch series addresses these three problems.
    
    This patch (of 8):
    
    This is a minor preparatory patch.  After subsequent patches,
    round_pipe_size() will be called from pipe_set_size(), so place
    round_pipe_size() above pipe_set_size().
    
    Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/91a91fdb-a959-ba7f-b551-b62477cc98a1@gmail.com
    
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarMichael Kerrisk <mtk.manpages@gmail.com>
    Reviewed-by: default avatarVegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@oracle.com>
    Cc: Willy Tarreau <w@1wt.eu>
    Cc: <socketpair@gmail.com>
    Cc: Tetsuo Handa <penguin-kernel@I-love.SAKURA.ne.jp>
    Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@fb.com>
    Cc: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarAndrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    f491bd71