History log of /linux-master/Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-kernel-livepatch
Revision Date Author Comments
# bb26cfd9 02-Sep-2022 Song Liu <song@kernel.org>

livepatch: add sysfs entry "patched" for each klp_object

Add per klp_object sysfs entry "patched". It makes it easier to debug
typos in the module name.

Signed-off-by: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
[pmladek@suse.com: Updated kernel version when the sysfs file will be introduced]
Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220902205208.3117798-2-song@kernel.org


# 89e33ea7 03-May-2019 Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org>

docs: livepatch: convert docs to ReST and rename to *.rst

Convert livepatch documentation to ReST format. The changes
are mostly trivial, as the documents are already on a good
shape. Just a few markup changes are needed for Sphinx to
properly parse the docs.

The conversion is actually:
- add blank lines and identation in order to identify paragraphs;
- fix tables markups;
- add some lists markups;
- mark literal blocks;
- The in-file TOC becomes a comment, in order to skip it from the
output, as Sphinx already generates an index there.
- adjust title markups.

At its new index.rst, let's add a :orphan: while this is not linked to
the main index.rst file, in order to avoid build warnings.

Signed-off-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+samsung@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Kamalesh Babulal <kamalesh@linux.vnet.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>


# 0b3d5279 15-Jan-2019 Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>

livepatch: Remove signal sysfs attribute

The fake signal is send automatically now. We can rely on it completely
and remove the sysfs attribute.

Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>


# c99a2be7 22-Nov-2017 Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>

livepatch: force transition to finish

If a task sleeps in a set of patched functions uninterruptedly, it could
block the whole transition indefinitely. Thus it may be useful to clear
its TIF_PATCH_PENDING to allow the process to finish.

Admin can do that now by writing to force sysfs attribute in livepatch
sysfs directory. TIF_PATCH_PENDING is then cleared for all tasks and the
transition can finish successfully.

Important note! Administrator should not use this feature without a
clearance from a patch distributor. It must be checked that by doing so
the consistency model guarantees are not violated. Removal (rmmod) of
patch modules is permanently disabled when the feature is used. It
cannot be guaranteed there is no task sleeping in such module.

Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>


# 43347d56 15-Nov-2017 Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>

livepatch: send a fake signal to all blocking tasks

Live patching consistency model is of LEAVE_PATCHED_SET and
SWITCH_THREAD. This means that all tasks in the system have to be marked
one by one as safe to call a new patched function. Safe means when a
task is not (sleeping) in a set of patched functions. That is, no
patched function is on the task's stack. Another clearly safe place is
the boundary between kernel and userspace. The patching waits for all
tasks to get outside of the patched set or to cross the boundary. The
transition is completed afterwards.

The problem is that a task can block the transition for quite a long
time, if not forever. It could sleep in a set of patched functions, for
example. Luckily we can force the task to leave the set by sending it a
fake signal, that is a signal with no data in signal pending structures
(no handler, no sign of proper signal delivered). Suspend/freezer use
this to freeze the tasks as well. The task gets TIF_SIGPENDING set and
is woken up (if it has been sleeping in the kernel before) or kicked by
rescheduling IPI (if it was running on other CPU). This causes the task
to go to kernel/userspace boundary where the signal would be handled and
the task would be marked as safe in terms of live patching.

There are tasks which are not affected by this technique though. The
fake signal is not sent to kthreads. They should be handled differently.
They can be woken up so they leave the patched set and their
TIF_PATCH_PENDING can be cleared thanks to stack checking.

For the sake of completeness, if the task is in TASK_RUNNING state but
not currently running on some CPU it doesn't get the IPI, but it would
eventually handle the signal anyway. Second, if the task runs in the
kernel (in TASK_RUNNING state) it gets the IPI, but the signal is not
handled on return from the interrupt. It would be handled on return to
the userspace in the future when the fake signal is sent again. Stack
checking deals with these cases in a better way.

If the task was sleeping in a syscall it would be woken by our fake
signal, it would check if TIF_SIGPENDING is set (by calling
signal_pending() predicate) and return ERESTART* or EINTR. Syscalls with
ERESTART* return values are restarted in case of the fake signal (see
do_signal()). EINTR is propagated back to the userspace program. This
could disturb the program, but...

* each process dealing with signals should react accordingly to EINTR
return values.
* syscalls returning EINTR happen to be quite common situation in the
system even if no fake signal is sent.
* freezer sends the fake signal and does not deal with EINTR anyhow.
Thus EINTR values are returned when the system is resumed.

The very safe marking is done in architectures' "entry" on syscall and
interrupt/exception exit paths, and in a stack checking functions of
livepatch. TIF_PATCH_PENDING is cleared and the next
recalc_sigpending() drops TIF_SIGPENDING. In connection with this, also
call klp_update_patch_state() before do_signal(), so that
recalc_sigpending() in dequeue_signal() can clear TIF_PATCH_PENDING
immediately and thus prevent a double call of do_signal().

Note that the fake signal is not sent to stopped/traced tasks. Such task
prevents the patching to finish till it continues again (is not traced
anymore).

Last, sending the fake signal is not automatic. It is done only when
admin requests it by writing 1 to signal sysfs attribute in livepatch
sysfs directory.

Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Cc: Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>
Cc: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: linuxppc-dev@lists.ozlabs.org
Cc: x86@kernel.org
Acked-by: Michael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au> (powerpc)
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>


# d83a7cb3 13-Feb-2017 Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>

livepatch: change to a per-task consistency model

Change livepatch to use a basic per-task consistency model. This is the
foundation which will eventually enable us to patch those ~10% of
security patches which change function or data semantics. This is the
biggest remaining piece needed to make livepatch more generally useful.

This code stems from the design proposal made by Vojtech [1] in November
2014. It's a hybrid of kGraft and kpatch: it uses kGraft's per-task
consistency and syscall barrier switching combined with kpatch's stack
trace switching. There are also a number of fallback options which make
it quite flexible.

Patches are applied on a per-task basis, when the task is deemed safe to
switch over. When a patch is enabled, livepatch enters into a
transition state where tasks are converging to the patched state.
Usually this transition state can complete in a few seconds. The same
sequence occurs when a patch is disabled, except the tasks converge from
the patched state to the unpatched state.

An interrupt handler inherits the patched state of the task it
interrupts. The same is true for forked tasks: the child inherits the
patched state of the parent.

Livepatch uses several complementary approaches to determine when it's
safe to patch tasks:

1. The first and most effective approach is stack checking of sleeping
tasks. If no affected functions are on the stack of a given task,
the task is patched. In most cases this will patch most or all of
the tasks on the first try. Otherwise it'll keep trying
periodically. This option is only available if the architecture has
reliable stacks (HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE).

2. The second approach, if needed, is kernel exit switching. A
task is switched when it returns to user space from a system call, a
user space IRQ, or a signal. It's useful in the following cases:

a) Patching I/O-bound user tasks which are sleeping on an affected
function. In this case you have to send SIGSTOP and SIGCONT to
force it to exit the kernel and be patched.
b) Patching CPU-bound user tasks. If the task is highly CPU-bound
then it will get patched the next time it gets interrupted by an
IRQ.
c) In the future it could be useful for applying patches for
architectures which don't yet have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE. In
this case you would have to signal most of the tasks on the
system. However this isn't supported yet because there's
currently no way to patch kthreads without
HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE.

3. For idle "swapper" tasks, since they don't ever exit the kernel, they
instead have a klp_update_patch_state() call in the idle loop which
allows them to be patched before the CPU enters the idle state.

(Note there's not yet such an approach for kthreads.)

All the above approaches may be skipped by setting the 'immediate' flag
in the 'klp_patch' struct, which will disable per-task consistency and
patch all tasks immediately. This can be useful if the patch doesn't
change any function or data semantics. Note that, even with this flag
set, it's possible that some tasks may still be running with an old
version of the function, until that function returns.

There's also an 'immediate' flag in the 'klp_func' struct which allows
you to specify that certain functions in the patch can be applied
without per-task consistency. This might be useful if you want to patch
a common function like schedule(), and the function change doesn't need
consistency but the rest of the patch does.

For architectures which don't have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE, the user
must set patch->immediate which causes all tasks to be patched
immediately. This option should be used with care, only when the patch
doesn't change any function or data semantics.

In the future, architectures which don't have HAVE_RELIABLE_STACKTRACE
may be allowed to use per-task consistency if we can come up with
another way to patch kthreads.

The /sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/transition file shows whether a patch
is in transition. Only a single patch (the topmost patch on the stack)
can be in transition at a given time. A patch can remain in transition
indefinitely, if any of the tasks are stuck in the initial patch state.

A transition can be reversed and effectively canceled by writing the
opposite value to the /sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/enabled file while
the transition is in progress. Then all the tasks will attempt to
converge back to the original patch state.

[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20141107140458.GA21774@suse.cz

Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Acked-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org> # for the scheduler changes
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>


# 444f9e99 01-Dec-2015 Chris J Arges <chris.j.arges@canonical.com>

livepatch: function,sympos scheme in livepatch sysfs directory

The following directory structure will allow for cases when the same
function name exists in a single object.
/sys/kernel/livepatch/<patch>/<object>/<function,sympos>

The sympos number corresponds to the nth occurrence of the symbol name in
kallsyms for the patched object.

An example of patching multiple symbols can be found here:
https://github.com/dynup/kpatch/issues/493

Signed-off-by: Chris J Arges <chris.j.arges@canonical.com>
Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
Acked-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>


# b700e7f0 16-Dec-2014 Seth Jennings <sjenning@redhat.com>

livepatch: kernel: add support for live patching

This commit introduces code for the live patching core. It implements
an ftrace-based mechanism and kernel interface for doing live patching
of kernel and kernel module functions.

It represents the greatest common functionality set between kpatch and
kgraft and can accept patches built using either method.

This first version does not implement any consistency mechanism that
ensures that old and new code do not run together. In practice, ~90% of
CVEs are safe to apply in this way, since they simply add a conditional
check. However, any function change that can not execute safely with
the old version of the function can _not_ be safely applied in this
version.

[ jkosina@suse.cz: due to the number of contributions that got folded into
this original patch from Seth Jennings, add SUSE's copyright as well, as
discussed via e-mail ]

Signed-off-by: Seth Jennings <sjenning@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Reviewed-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Reviewed-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.cz>
Reviewed-by: Masami Hiramatsu <masami.hiramatsu.pt@hitachi.com>
Signed-off-by: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>