ext4: fix deadlock allocating bio_post_read_ctx from mempool

From: Eric Biggers <[email protected]>

Without any form of coordination, any case where multiple allocations from the same mempool are needed at a time to make forward progress can deadlock under memory pressure.

This is the case for struct bio_post_read_ctx, as one can be allocated to decrypt a Merkle tree page during fsverity_verify_bio(), which itself is running from a post-read callback for a data bio which has its own struct bio_post_read_ctx.

Fix this by freeing the first bio_post_read_ctx before calling fsverity_verify_bio(). This works because verity (if enabled) is always the last post-read step.

This deadlock can be reproduced by trying to read from an encrypted verity file after reducing NUM_PREALLOC_POST_READ_CTXS to 1 and patching mempool_alloc() to pretend that pool->alloc() always fails.

Note that since NUM_PREALLOC_POST_READ_CTXS is actually 128, to actually hit this bug in practice would require reading from lots of encrypted verity files at the same time. But it's theoretically possible, as N available objects isn't enough to guarantee forward progress when > N/2 threads each need 2 objects at a time.

---
 fs/ext4/readpage.c | 17 +++++++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

index fef7755300c3..410c904cf59b 100644
@@ -57,6 +57,7 @@ enum bio_post_read_step {
 	STEP_INITIAL = 0,
 	STEP_DECRYPT,
 	STEP_VERITY,
+	STEP_MAX,
 };
 
 struct bio_post_read_ctx {

@@ -106,10 +107,22 @@ static void verity_work(struct work_struct *work)
 {
 	struct bio_post_read_ctx *ctx =
 		container_of(work, struct bio_post_read_ctx, work);
+	struct bio *bio = ctx->bio;
 
-	fsverity_verify_bio(ctx->bio);
+	/*
+	 * fsverity_verify_bio() may call readpages() again, and although verity
+	 * will be disabled for that, decryption may still be needed, causing
+	 * another bio_post_read_ctx to be allocated.  So to guarantee that
+	 * mempool_alloc() never deadlocks we must free the current ctx first.
+	 * This is safe because verity is the last post-read step.
+	 */
+	BUILD_BUG_ON(STEP_VERITY + 1 != STEP_MAX);
+	mempool_free(ctx, bio_post_read_ctx_pool);
+	bio->bi_private = NULL;
 
-	bio_post_read_processing(ctx);
+	fsverity_verify_bio(bio);
+
+	__read_end_io(bio);
 }
 
 static void bio_post_read_processing(struct bio_post_read_ctx *ctx)

2.24.1

Thanks, applied.

- Ted