Re: Hangup calling setuid() from vfork() child

[Markus Wichmann <nullplan@gmx.net>]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 08:29:16AM -0700, Joshua Hudson wrote:
> If there is more than one thread and vfork() calls setuid(), musl libc hangs up.
>
> void *thfunction(void*ig) {sleep(1000);returnNULL;}
>
> int main()
> {
>     pthread_t id;
>     pthread_create(&id, NULL, thfunction, NULL);
>     if (vfork() == 0) {
>         setuid(0); /* hangup */
>         _exit(0);
>     }
> }

That is an interesting interaction between threads and vfork().

The child process has only one thread, but it doesn't know that. It also
can't write it down, since it is sharing memory with the parent (it
would overwrite the parent's variables).

POSIX no longer defines vfork(), and therefore does not define any
safety attributes for it. Is it reasonable to define vfork() as unusable
in a multithreaded process? Calling something as intricate as
__synccall() in a vfork() child is going to corrupt memory on a large
scale.

posix_spawn() circumvents the problem by calling the system calls
directly, BTW.

Ciao,
Markus