published September 4, 2024
In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved:
drm/xe/preempt_fence: enlarge the fence critical section
It is really easy to introduce subtle deadlocks in
preempt_fence_work_func() since we operate on single global ordered-wq
for signalling our preempt fences behind the scenes, so even though we
signal a particular fence, everything in the callback should be in the
fence critical section, since blocking in the callback will prevent
other published fences from signalling. If we enlarge the fence critical
section to cover the entire callback, then lockdep should be able to
understand this better, and complain if we grab a sensitive lock like
vm->lock, which is also held when waiting on preempt fences.