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Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2020 18:57:21 +0200
From: Olaf Flebbe <of@...ebbe.de>
To: musl@...ts.openwall.com
Subject: Re: Revisiting sigaltstack and implementation-internal signals

Hi Rick ,

While the alternate stack is in use on cannot change the alternate stack.

See https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/ 
EPERM Error.

Olaf


> Am 10.08.2020 um 18:36 schrieb Rich Felker <dalias@...c.org>:
> 
> On Mon, Aug 10, 2020 at 10:15:13AM +0200, Olaf Flebbe wrote:
>> Hi, 
>> 
>> I have some problems to follow the discussion here.
>> 
>> It is not about musl to create an alternate stack, it is to *honor* the alternate stack, if the application installed one, for a reason.
>> 
>> I am proposing smthg like
>> 
>> --- /oss/musl-1.2.1/src/thread/synccall.c
>> +++ /work/musl/src/thread/synccall.c
>> @@ -45,7 +45,7 @@
>> {
>> 	sigset_t oldmask;
>> 	int cs, i, r;
>> -	struct sigaction sa = { .sa_flags = SA_RESTART, .sa_handler = handler };
>> +	struct sigaction sa = { .sa_flags = SA_RESTART|SA_ONSTACK, ..sa_handler = handler };
>> 	pthread_t self = __pthread_self(), td;
>> 	int count = 0;
>> 
>> This will fix the problem with dynamic stacks, like go implements it. 
>> If the application does not install one, kernel will ignore
>> SA_ONSTACK. (This is even specified by POSIX, since there is no
>> error condition mentioned in man page specifically for this).
> 
> It's fundamental, since presence and identity of an alternate stack
> are thread-local properties and SA_ONSTACK is global to the signal
> disposition.
> 
> The behavior we're concerned about this alterring is not the case
> where an application does not install an alternate stack; of course
> that's unaffected. The interesting case is where an application does
> install one, but expects (albeit IMO wrongly; that's what we're trying
> to establish) that the stack memory is not touched/clobbered unless
> there's actually an SA_ONSTACK signal handler present to run on it and
> such a signal arrives. With the proposed change, the memory for the
> alternate stack can be clobbered asynchronously with no such signal
> handler existing. (In case it's not clear, the above code is *not a
> signal handler* from the perspective that's relevant; it's an
> implementation detail internal to the implementation.)
> 
> One way such clobbering could manifest is when a signal handler
> running on the alternate stack temporarily moves the stack pointer to
> somewhere else (not on the alternate stack), via swapcontext or some
> other method. In this case, if a signal for cancellation or synccall
> arrives, the kernel will consider the alt stack not in use, and will
> start using it again from the beginning, clobbering the still-running
> frames.
> 
> Rich


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