On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 02:50:21PM -0400, Richard Guy Briggs wrote:
 On 2016-08-23 16:20, Mateusz Guzik wrote:
 > audit_exe_compare directly accesses mm->exe_file without making sure the
 > object is stable. Fixing it using current primitives results in
 > partially duplicating what proc_exe_link is doing.
 > 
 > As such, introduce a trivial helper which can be used in both places and
 > fix the func.
 > 
 > Changes since v1:
 > * removed an unused 'out' label which crept in
 > 
 > Mateusz Guzik (2):
 >   mm: introduce get_task_exe_file
 >   audit: fix exe_file access in audit_exe_compare
 
 The task_lock affects a much bigger struct than the mm ref count.  Is
 this really necessary?  Is a spin-lock significantly lower cost than a
 refcount?  Other than that, this refactorization looks sensible.
  
proc_exe_link was taking the lock anyway to guarantee a stable mm.
I think the helper cleans the code up a little bit and there is
microoptimisation to not play with the refcount.
If audit_exe_compare has guarantees the task wont reach exit_mm, it can
use get_mm_exe_file which means the atomic op would be only on the file
object.
I was under the impression this is the expected behaviour, but your
patch used the task lock to grab mm, so I mimicked it here.
-- 
Mateusz Guzik