From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.3 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_MED,RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_H3,RCVD_IN_MSPIKE_WL autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 31660 invoked from network); 31 Oct 2020 17:33:15 -0000 Received: from mother.openwall.net (195.42.179.200) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 31 Oct 2020 17:33:15 -0000 Received: (qmail 1357 invoked by uid 550); 31 Oct 2020 17:33:13 -0000 Mailing-List: contact musl-help@lists.openwall.com; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-ID: Reply-To: musl@lists.openwall.com Received: (qmail 1339 invoked from network); 31 Oct 2020 17:33:13 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2020 20:33:01 +0300 From: Alexey Izbyshev To: musl@lists.openwall.com In-Reply-To: <20201029133839.GL534@brightrain.aerifal.cx> References: <20201029063448.GK534@brightrain.aerifal.cx> <20201029133839.GL534@brightrain.aerifal.cx> User-Agent: Roundcube Webmail/1.4.4 Message-ID: <7197cef63957a7efa79d219c02ea35f8@ispras.ru> X-Sender: izbyshev@ispras.ru Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [musl] More thoughts on wrapping signal handling On 2020-10-29 16:38, Rich Felker wrote: > On Thu, Oct 29, 2020 at 02:45:34PM +0300, Alexey Izbyshev wrote: >> On 2020-10-29 09:34, Rich Felker wrote: >> >In "Re: [musl] Re: [PATCH] Make abort() AS-safe (Bug 26275)." >> >(20201010002612.GC17637@brightrain.aerifal.cx, >> >https://www.openwall.com/lists/musl/2020/10/10/1) I raised the >> >longstanding thought of having libc wrap signal handling. This is a >> >little bit of a big hammer for what it was proposed for -- fixing an >> >extremely-rare race between abort and execve -- but today I had a >> >thought about another use of it that's really compelling. >> > >> >What I noted before was that, by wrapping signal handlers, libc could >> >implement a sort of "rollback" to restart a critical section that was >> >interrupted. However this really only has any use when the critical >> >section has no side effects aside from its final completion, and >> >except for execve where replacement of the process gives the atomic >> >cutoff for rollback, it requires __cp_end-like asm label of the end of >> >the critical section. So it's of limited utility. >> > >> >However, what's more interesting than restarting the critical section >> >when a signal is received is *allowing it to complete* before handling >> >the signal. This can be implemented by having the wrapper, upon seeing >> >that it interrupted a critical section, save the siginfo_t in TLS and >> >immediately return, leaving signals blocked, without executing the >> >application-installed signal handler. Then, when leaving the critical >> >section, the unlock function can see the saved siginfo_t and call the >> >application's signal handler. Effectively, it's as if the signal were >> >just blocked until the end of the critical section. >> > >> As described, that would call the application's signal handler on >> the wrong stack in case SA_ONSTACK was used. >> >> And what happens if the application wants to modify ucontext via the >> third argument of the signal handler? > > Yes, I kinda hand-waved over this with the word "call", which I > thought about annotating with (*). In the case of SA_ONSTACK you need > a primitive to "call on new stack", and while the ucontext is mostly > not meaningful/inspectable to the signal handler (because it's > interrupting libc code), the saved signal mask is. You can have the > caller restore it (in place of SYS_[rt_]sigreturn), but the natural > common solution to all of these needs is having a sort of makecontext. > Such "sigcall/sigreturn" shims would have to emulate kernel behavior precisely. If a new feature is added into the kernel, and the application detects that it's supported based on what the *kernel* tells it, subtle breakage might occur due to imprecise emulation (as a random example, consider SS_AUTODISARM flag of sigaltstack()). So you'd have to intercept feature tests as well, and it starts to look messy IMO. Re-raising the signal would avoid most of that emulation, but appears to be broken at least due to signal ordering issues as mentioned in https://www.openwall.com/lists/musl/2020/10/29/12. Alexey