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Eric Biggers d7d27cfc5c kmod: make request_module() return an error when autoloading is disabled
Patch series "module autoloading fixes and cleanups", v5.

This series fixes a bug where request_module() was reporting success to
kernel code when module autoloading had been completely disabled via
'echo > /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe'.

It also addresses the issues raised on the original thread
(https://lkml.kernel.org/lkml/20200310223731.126894-1-ebiggers@kernel.org/T/#u)
bydocumenting the modprobe sysctl, adding a self-test for the empty path
case, and downgrading a user-reachable WARN_ONCE().

This patch (of 4):

It's long been possible to disable kernel module autoloading completely
(while still allowing manual module insertion) by setting
/proc/sys/kernel/modprobe to the empty string.

This can be preferable to setting it to a nonexistent file since it
avoids the overhead of an attempted execve(), avoids potential
deadlocks, and avoids the call to security_kernel_module_request() and
thus on SELinux-based systems eliminates the need to write SELinux rules
to dontaudit module_request.

However, when module autoloading is disabled in this way,
request_module() returns 0.  This is broken because callers expect 0 to
mean that the module was successfully loaded.

Apparently this was never noticed because this method of disabling
module autoloading isn't used much, and also most callers don't use the
return value of request_module() since it's always necessary to check
whether the module registered its functionality or not anyway.

But improperly returning 0 can indeed confuse a few callers, for example
get_fs_type() in fs/filesystems.c where it causes a WARNING to be hit:

	if (!fs && (request_module("fs-%.*s", len, name) == 0)) {
		fs = __get_fs_type(name, len);
		WARN_ONCE(!fs, "request_module fs-%.*s succeeded, but still no fs?\n", len, name);
	}

This is easily reproduced with:

	echo > /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe
	mount -t NONEXISTENT none /

It causes:

	request_module fs-NONEXISTENT succeeded, but still no fs?
	WARNING: CPU: 1 PID: 1106 at fs/filesystems.c:275 get_fs_type+0xd6/0xf0
	[...]

This should actually use pr_warn_once() rather than WARN_ONCE(), since
it's also user-reachable if userspace immediately unloads the module.
Regardless, request_module() should correctly return an error when it
fails.  So let's make it return -ENOENT, which matches the error when
the modprobe binary doesn't exist.

I've also sent patches to document and test this case.

Signed-off-by: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Reviewed-by: Jessica Yu <jeyu@kernel.org>
Acked-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>
Cc: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Jeff Vander Stoep <jeffv@google.com>
Cc: Ben Hutchings <benh@debian.org>
Cc: Josh Triplett <josh@joshtriplett.org>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200310223731.126894-1-ebiggers@kernel.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200312202552.241885-1-ebiggers@kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2020-04-10 15:36:22 -07:00
arch mm/memory_hotplug: add pgprot_t to mhp_params 2020-04-10 15:36:21 -07:00
block SCSI misc on 20200402 2020-04-02 17:03:53 -07:00
certs .gitignore: add SPDX License Identifier 2020-03-25 11:50:48 +01:00
crypto Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2020-04-01 14:47:40 -07:00
Documentation mm: hugetlb: optionally allocate gigantic hugepages using cma 2020-04-10 15:36:21 -07:00
drivers mm/vma: introduce VM_ACCESS_FLAGS 2020-04-10 15:36:21 -07:00
fs ocfs2: no need try to truncate file beyond i_size 2020-04-10 15:36:21 -07:00
include mm/memory_hotplug: add pgprot_t to mhp_params 2020-04-10 15:36:21 -07:00
init arm64 fixes: 2020-04-09 11:04:16 -07:00
ipc ipc/shm.c: make compat_ksys_shmctl() static 2020-04-07 10:43:45 -07:00
kernel kmod: make request_module() return an error when autoloading is disabled 2020-04-10 15:36:22 -07:00
lib libnvdimm for 5.7 2020-04-08 21:03:40 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Rename other to deprecated 2019-05-03 06:34:32 -06:00
mm mm/memremap: set caching mode for PCI P2PDMA memory to WC 2020-04-10 15:36:21 -07:00
net The main items are: 2020-04-08 21:44:05 -07:00
samples samples/hw_breakpoint: drop use of kallsyms_lookup_name() 2020-04-07 10:43:44 -07:00
scripts ubsan: split "bounds" checker from other options 2020-04-07 10:43:44 -07:00
security Keyrings fixes 2020-04-04 12:24:47 -07:00
sound SPDX patches for 5.7-rc1. 2020-04-03 13:12:26 -07:00
tools powerpc updates for 5.7 #2 2020-04-09 11:01:42 -07:00
usr .gitignore: add SPDX License Identifier 2020-03-25 11:50:48 +01:00
virt KVM: Pass kvm_init()'s opaque param to additional arch funcs 2020-03-31 10:48:03 -04:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2020-03-06 21:50:05 +01:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for dts files 2019-12-04 19:44:11 -08:00
.gitignore .gitignore: add SPDX License Identifier 2020-03-25 11:50:48 +01:00
.mailmap media updates for v5.7-rc1 2020-03-30 13:42:05 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: Hand MIPS over to Thomas 2020-02-24 22:43:18 -08:00
Kbuild kbuild: rename hostprogs-y/always to hostprogs/always-y 2020-02-04 01:53:07 +09:00
Kconfig docs: kbuild: convert docs to ReST and rename to *.rst 2019-06-14 14:21:21 -06:00
MAINTAINERS libnvdimm for 5.7 2020-04-08 21:03:40 -07:00
Makefile Kbuild updates for v5.7 2020-03-31 16:03:39 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.