Fix a bug in kprobes that can cause an Oops or even a crash when a return
probe is installed on one of the following functions: sys_execve,
do_execve, load_*_binary, flush_old_exec, or flush_thread. The fix is to
remove the call to kprobe_flush_task() in flush_thread(). This fix has
been tested on all architectures for which the return-probes feature has
been implemented (i386, x86_64, ppc64, ia64). Please apply.
BACKGROUND
Up to now, we have called kprobe_flush_task() under two situations: when a
task exits, and when it execs. Flushing kretprobe_instances on exit is
correct because (a) do_exit() doesn't return, and (b) one or more
return-probed functions may be active when a task calls do_exit(). Neither
is the case for sys_execve() and its callees.
Initially, the mistaken call to kprobe_flush_task() on exec was harmless
because we put the "real" return address of each active probed function
back in the stack, just to be safe, when we recycled its
kretprobe_instance. When support for ppc64 and ia64 was added, this safety
measure couldn't be employed, and was eventually dropped even for i386 and
x86_64. sys_execve() and its callees were informally blacklisted for
return probes until this fix was developed.
Acked-by: Prasanna S Panchamukhi <prasanna@in.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Jim Keniston <jkenisto@us.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Jim Keniston