tree 5cc5ff53498de2f5bd8262a467fdd39454360cdc
parent 43a73a50b352cd3df25b3ced72033942a6a0f919
author Kay Sievers <kay@vrfy.org> 1341593409 -0700
committer Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> 1341593409 -0700

kmsg: properly handle concurrent non-blocking read() from /proc/kmsg

The /proc/kmsg read() interface is internally simply wired up to a sequence
of syslog() syscalls, which might are racy between their checks and actions,
regarding concurrency.

In the (very uncommon) case of concurrent readers of /dev/kmsg, relying on
usual O_NONBLOCK behavior, the recently introduced mutex might block an
O_NONBLOCK reader in read(), when poll() returns for it, but another process
has already read the data in the meantime. We've seen that while running
artificial test setups and tools that "fight" about /proc/kmsg data.

This restores the original /proc/kmsg behavior, where in case of concurrent
read()s, poll() might wake up but the read() syscall will just return 0 to
the caller, while another process has "stolen" the data.

This is in the general case not the expected behavior, but it is the exact
same one, that can easily be triggered with a 3.4 kernel, and some tools
might just rely on it.

The mutex is not needed, the original integrity issue which introduced it,
is in the meantime covered by:
  "fill buffer with more than a single message for SYSLOG_ACTION_READ"
  116e90b23f74d303e8d607c7a7d54f60f14ab9f2

Cc: Yuanhan Liu <yuanhan.liu@linux.intel.com>
Acked-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>
Signed-off-by: Kay Sievers <kay@vrfy.org>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>