Patch "splice: handle zero nr_pages in splice_to_pipe()" has been added to the 4.5-stable tree

This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled

splice: handle zero nr_pages in splice_to_pipe()

to the 4.5-stable tree which can be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary

The filename of the patch is:
splice-handle-zero-nr_pages-in-splice_to_pipe.patch
and it can be found in the queue-4.5 subdirectory.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <[email protected]> know about it.

From: Rabin Vincent <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 21:19:06 +0100
Subject: splice: handle zero nr_pages in splice_to_pipe()

From: Rabin Vincent <[email protected]>

commit d6785d9152147596f60234157da2b02540c3e60f upstream.

Running the following command:

busybox cat /sys/kernel/debug/tracing/trace_pipe > /dev/null

with any tracing enabled pretty very quickly leads to various NULL pointer dereferences and VM BUG_ON()s, such as these:

 BUG: unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at 0000000000000020
 IP: [<ffffffff8119df6c>] generic_pipe_buf_release+0xc/0x40
 Call Trace:
  [<ffffffff811c48a3>] splice_direct_to_actor+0x143/0x1e0
  [<ffffffff811c42e0>] ? generic_pipe_buf_nosteal+0x10/0x10
  [<ffffffff811c49cf>] do_splice_direct+0x8f/0xb0
  [<ffffffff81196869>] do_sendfile+0x199/0x380
  [<ffffffff81197600>] SyS_sendfile64+0x90/0xa0
  [<ffffffff8192cbee>] entry_SYSCALL_64_fastpath+0x12/0x6d

 page dumped because: VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(atomic_read(&page->_count) == 0)
 kernel BUG at include/linux/mm.h:367!
 invalid opcode: 0000 [#1] PREEMPT SMP DEBUG_PAGEALLOC
 RIP: [<ffffffff8119df9c>] generic_pipe_buf_release+0x3c/0x40
 Call Trace:
  [<ffffffff811c48a3>] splice_direct_to_actor+0x143/0x1e0
  [<ffffffff811c42e0>] ? generic_pipe_buf_nosteal+0x10/0x10
  [<ffffffff811c49cf>] do_splice_direct+0x8f/0xb0
  [<ffffffff81196869>] do_sendfile+0x199/0x380
  [<ffffffff81197600>] SyS_sendfile64+0x90/0xa0
  [<ffffffff8192cd1e>] tracesys_phase2+0x84/0x89

(busybox's cat uses sendfile(2), unlike the coreutils version)

This is because tracing_splice_read_pipe() can call splice_to_pipe() with spd->nr_pages == 0. spd_pages underflows in splice_to_pipe() and we fill the page pointers and the other fields of the pipe_buffers with garbage.

All other callers of splice_to_pipe() avoid calling it when nr_pages == 0, and we could make tracing_splice_read_pipe() do that too, but it seems reasonable to have splice_to_page() handle this condition gracefully.

---
 fs/splice.c |    3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

@@ -185,6 +185,9 @@ ssize_t splice_to_pipe(struct pipe_inode
 	unsigned int spd_pages = spd->nr_pages;
 	int ret, do_wakeup, page_nr;
 
+	if (!spd_pages)
+		return 0;
+
 	ret = 0;
 	do_wakeup = 0;
 	page_nr = 0;

Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from [email protected] are

queue-4.5/tracing-fix-crash-from-reading-trace_pipe-with-sendfile.patch queue-4.5/splice-handle-zero-nr_pages-in-splice_to_pipe.patch