[3.13.y.z extended stable] Patch "netlink: Fix handling of error from netlink_dump()." has been added to staging queue

[Kamal Mostafa]

This is a note to let you know that I have just added a patch titled

    netlink: Fix handling of error from netlink_dump().

to the linux-3.13.y-queue branch of the 3.13.y.z extended stable tree 
which can be found at:

 http://kernel.ubuntu.com/git?p=ubuntu/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/linux-3.13.y-queue

This patch is scheduled to be released in version 3.13.11.6.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to this tree, please 
reply to this email.

For more information about the 3.13.y.z tree, see
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/Dev/ExtendedStable

Thanks.
-Kamal

------

>From 8a430b144ae807ecef30be6c0e8e8ed84086cff2 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Ben Pfaff <blp at nicira.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2014 10:31:22 -0700
Subject: netlink: Fix handling of error from netlink_dump().

[ Upstream commit ac30ef832e6af0505b6f0251a6659adcfa74975e ]

netlink_dump() returns a negative errno value on error.  Until now,
netlink_recvmsg() directly recorded that negative value in sk->sk_err, but
that's wrong since sk_err takes positive errno values.  (This manifests as
userspace receiving a positive return value from the recv() system call,
falsely indicating success.) This bug was introduced in the commit that
started checking the netlink_dump() return value, commit b44d211 (netlink:
handle errors from netlink_dump()).

Multithreaded Netlink dumps are one way to trigger this behavior in
practice, as described in the commit message for the userspace workaround
posted here:
    http://openvswitch.org/pipermail/dev/2014-June/042339.html

This commit also fixes the same bug in netlink_poll(), introduced in commit
cd1df525d (netlink: add flow control for memory mapped I/O).

Signed-off-by: Ben Pfaff <blp at nicira.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem at davemloft.net>
Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal at canonical.com>
---
 net/netlink/af_netlink.c | 4 ++--
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/net/netlink/af_netlink.c b/net/netlink/af_netlink.c
index ba45917..ab68a92e 100644
--- a/net/netlink/af_netlink.c
+++ b/net/netlink/af_netlink.c
@@ -628,7 +628,7 @@ static unsigned int netlink_poll(struct file *file, struct socket *sock,
 		while (nlk->cb_running && netlink_dump_space(nlk)) {
 			err = netlink_dump(sk);
 			if (err < 0) {
-				sk->sk_err = err;
+				sk->sk_err = -err;
 				sk->sk_error_report(sk);
 				break;
 			}
@@ -2440,7 +2440,7 @@ static int netlink_recvmsg(struct kiocb *kiocb, struct socket *sock,
 	    atomic_read(&sk->sk_rmem_alloc) <= sk->sk_rcvbuf / 2) {
 		ret = netlink_dump(sk);
 		if (ret) {
-			sk->sk_err = ret;
+			sk->sk_err = -ret;
 			sk->sk_error_report(sk);
 		}
 	}
--
1.9.1