Re: [PATCH v5 06/20] drm/dp_mst: Introduce new refcounting scheme for mstbs and ports
On Tue, Jan 08, 2019 at 07:35:03PM -0500, Lyude Paul wrote:
> The current way of handling refcounting in the DP MST helpers is really
> confusing and probably just plain wrong because it's been hacked up many
> times over the years without anyone actually going over the code and
> seeing if things could be simplified.
>
> To the best of my understanding, the current scheme works like this:
> drm_dp_mst_port and drm_dp_mst_branch both have a single refcount. When
> this refcount hits 0 for either of the two, they're removed from the
> topology state, but not immediately freed. Both ports and branch devices
> will reinitialize their kref once it's hit 0 before actually destroying
> themselves. The intended purpose behind this is so that we can avoid
> problems like not being able to free a remote payload that might still
> be active, due to us having removed all of the port/branch device
> structures in memory, as per:
>
> commit 91a25e463130 ("drm/dp/mst: deallocate payload on port destruction")
>
> Which may have worked, but then it caused use-after-free errors. Being
> new to MST at the time, I tried fixing it;
>
> commit 263efde31f97 ("drm/dp/mst: Get validated port ref in
> drm_dp_update_payload_part1()")
>
> But, that was broken: both drm_dp_mst_port and drm_dp_mst_branch structs
> are validated in almost every DP MST helper function. Simply put, this
> means we go through the topology and try to see if the given
> drm_dp_mst_branch or drm_dp_mst_port is still attached to something
> before trying to use it in order to avoid dereferencing freed memory
> (something that has happened a LOT in the past with this library).
> Because of this it doesn't actually matter whether or not we keep keep
> the ports and branches around in memory as that's not enough, because
> any function that validates the branches and ports passed to it will
> still reject them anyway since they're no longer in the topology
> structure. So, use-after-free errors were fixed but payload deallocation
> was completely broken.
>
> Two years later, AMD informed me about this issue and I attempted to
> come up with a temporary fix, pending a long-overdue cleanup of this
> library:
>
> commit c54c7374ff44 ("drm/dp_mst: Skip validating ports during destruction,
> just ref")
>
> But then that introduced use-after-free errors, so I quickly reverted
> it:
>
> commit 9765635b3075 ("Revert "drm/dp_mst: Skip validating ports during
> destruction, just ref"")
>
> And in the process, learned that there is just no simple fix for this:
> the design is just broken. Unfortunately, the usage of these helpers are
> quite broken as well. Some drivers like i915 have been smart enough to
> avoid accessing any kind of information from MST port structures, but
> others like nouveau have assumed, understandably so, that
> drm_dp_mst_port structures are normal and can just be accessed at any
> time without worrying about use-after-free errors.
>
> After a lot of discussion, me and Daniel Vetter came up with a better
> idea to replace all of this.
>
> To summarize, since this is documented far more indepth in the
> documentation this patch introduces, we make it so that drm_dp_mst_port
> and drm_dp_mst_branch structures have two different classes of
> refcounts: topology_kref, and malloc_kref. topology_kref corresponds to
> the lifetime of the given drm_dp_mst_port or drm_dp_mst_branch in it's
> given topology. Once it hits zero, any associated connectors are removed
> and the branch or port can no longer be validated. malloc_kref
> corresponds to the lifetime of the memory allocation for the actual
> structure, and will always be non-zero so long as the topology_kref is
> non-zero. This gives us a way to allow callers to hold onto port and
> branch device structures past their topology lifetime, and dramatically
> simplifies the lifetimes of both structures. This also finally fixes the
> port deallocation problem, properly.
>
> Additionally: since this now means that we can keep ports and branch
> devices allocated in memory for however long we need, we no longer need
> a significant amount of the port validation that we currently do.
>
> Additionally, there is one last scenario that this fixes, which couldn't
> have been fixed properly beforehand:
>
> - CPU1 unrefs port from topology (refcount 1->0)
> - CPU2 refs port in topology(refcount 0->1)
>
> Since we now can guarantee memory safety for ports and branches
> as-needed, we also can make our main reference counting functions fix
> this problem by using kref_get_unless_zero() internally so that topology
> refcounts can only ever reach 0 once.
>
> Changes since v3:
> * Remove rebase detritus - danvet
> * Split out purely style changes into separate patches - hwentlan
>
> Changes since v2:
> * Fix commit message - checkpatch
> * s/)-1/) - 1/g - checkpatch
>
> Changes since v1:
> * Remove forward declarations - danvet
> * Move "Branch device and port refcounting" section from
[PATCH v5 06/20] drm/dp_mst: Introduce new refcounting scheme for mstbs and ports
The current way of handling refcounting in the DP MST helpers is really
confusing and probably just plain wrong because it's been hacked up many
times over the years without anyone actually going over the code and
seeing if things could be simplified.
To the best of my understanding, the current scheme works like this:
drm_dp_mst_port and drm_dp_mst_branch both have a single refcount. When
this refcount hits 0 for either of the two, they're removed from the
topology state, but not immediately freed. Both ports and branch devices
will reinitialize their kref once it's hit 0 before actually destroying
themselves. The intended purpose behind this is so that we can avoid
problems like not being able to free a remote payload that might still
be active, due to us having removed all of the port/branch device
structures in memory, as per:
commit 91a25e463130 ("drm/dp/mst: deallocate payload on port destruction")
Which may have worked, but then it caused use-after-free errors. Being
new to MST at the time, I tried fixing it;
commit 263efde31f97 ("drm/dp/mst: Get validated port ref in
drm_dp_update_payload_part1()")
But, that was broken: both drm_dp_mst_port and drm_dp_mst_branch structs
are validated in almost every DP MST helper function. Simply put, this
means we go through the topology and try to see if the given
drm_dp_mst_branch or drm_dp_mst_port is still attached to something
before trying to use it in order to avoid dereferencing freed memory
(something that has happened a LOT in the past with this library).
Because of this it doesn't actually matter whether or not we keep keep
the ports and branches around in memory as that's not enough, because
any function that validates the branches and ports passed to it will
still reject them anyway since they're no longer in the topology
structure. So, use-after-free errors were fixed but payload deallocation
was completely broken.
Two years later, AMD informed me about this issue and I attempted to
come up with a temporary fix, pending a long-overdue cleanup of this
library:
commit c54c7374ff44 ("drm/dp_mst: Skip validating ports during destruction,
just ref")
But then that introduced use-after-free errors, so I quickly reverted
it:
commit 9765635b3075 ("Revert "drm/dp_mst: Skip validating ports during
destruction, just ref"")
And in the process, learned that there is just no simple fix for this:
the design is just broken. Unfortunately, the usage of these helpers are
quite broken as well. Some drivers like i915 have been smart enough to
avoid accessing any kind of information from MST port structures, but
others like nouveau have assumed, understandably so, that
drm_dp_mst_port structures are normal and can just be accessed at any
time without worrying about use-after-free errors.
After a lot of discussion, me and Daniel Vetter came up with a better
idea to replace all of this.
To summarize, since this is documented far more indepth in the
documentation this patch introduces, we make it so that drm_dp_mst_port
and drm_dp_mst_branch structures have two different classes of
refcounts: topology_kref, and malloc_kref. topology_kref corresponds to
the lifetime of the given drm_dp_mst_port or drm_dp_mst_branch in it's
given topology. Once it hits zero, any associated connectors are removed
and the branch or port can no longer be validated. malloc_kref
corresponds to the lifetime of the memory allocation for the actual
structure, and will always be non-zero so long as the topology_kref is
non-zero. This gives us a way to allow callers to hold onto port and
branch device structures past their topology lifetime, and dramatically
simplifies the lifetimes of both structures. This also finally fixes the
port deallocation problem, properly.
Additionally: since this now means that we can keep ports and branch
devices allocated in memory for however long we need, we no longer need
a significant amount of the port validation that we currently do.
Additionally, there is one last scenario that this fixes, which couldn't
have been fixed properly beforehand:
- CPU1 unrefs port from topology (refcount 1->0)
- CPU2 refs port in topology(refcount 0->1)
Since we now can guarantee memory safety for ports and branches
as-needed, we also can make our main reference counting functions fix
this problem by using kref_get_unless_zero() internally so that topology
refcounts can only ever reach 0 once.
Changes since v3:
* Remove rebase detritus - danvet
* Split out purely style changes into separate patches - hwentlan
Changes since v2:
* Fix commit message - checkpatch
* s/)-1/) - 1/g - checkpatch
Changes since v1:
* Remove forward declarations - danvet
* Move "Branch device and port refcounting" section from documentation
into kernel-doc comments - danvet
* Export internal topology lifetime functions into their own section in
the kernel-docs - danvet
* s/@/&/g for struct references in kernel-docs - danvet
* Drop the "when they are no longer being used" bits from the
