posix-cpu-timers: workaround to suppress the problems with mt exec posix-cpu-timers.c correctly assumes that the dying process does posix_cpu_timers_exit_group() and removes all !CPUCLOCK_PERTHREAD timers from signal->cpu_timers list. But, it also assumes that timer->it.cpu.task is always the group leader, and thus the dead ->task means the dead thread group. This is obviously not true after de_thread() changes the leader. After that almost every posix_cpu_timer_ method has problems. It is not simple to fix this bug correctly. First of all, I think that timer->it.cpu should use struct pid instead of task_struct. Also, the locking should be reworked completely. In particular, tasklist_lock should not be used at all. This all needs a lot of nontrivial and hard-to-test changes. Change __exit_signal() to do posix_cpu_timers_exit_group() when the old leader dies during exec. This is not the fix, just the temporary hack to hide the problem for 2.6.37 and stable. IOW, this is obviously wrong but this is what we currently have anyway: cpu timers do not work after mt exec. In theory this change adds another race. The exiting leader can detach the timers which were attached to the new leader. However, the window between de_thread() and release_task() is small, we can pretend that sys_timer_create() was called before de_thread(). Upstream commit: http://git.kernel.org/linus/e0a70217107e6f9844628120412cb27bb4cea194
Thanks Eugene, committed for Fedora.
Statement: This issue did not affect the version of Linux kernel as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 as it did not have support for CPU time clocks for the POSIX clock interface. This has been addressed in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5, 6 and Red Hat Enterprise MRG via https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-0004.html, https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-0007.html and https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-0330.html.
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Via RHSA-2011:0004 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-0004.html
This issue has been addressed in following products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Via RHSA-2011:0007 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-0007.html
This issue has been addressed in following products: MRG for RHEL-5 Via RHSA-2011:0330 https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2011-0330.html