Subject: Re: bug#75322: SAFE_ALLOCA assumed to root Lisp_Objects/SSDATA(string)

From: Pip Cet <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2025 15:26:01 +0000

"Eli Zaretskii" <[email-masked]> writes:

>> Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2025 11:08:50 +0000
>> From: Pip Cet <[email-masked]>
>> Cc: Gerd Möllmann <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
>>
>> "Eli Zaretskii" <[email-masked]> writes:
>>
>> > The current code in callproc.c assumes that GC cannot run while we are
>> > parked in posix_spawn or vfork.
>>
>> If you're attempting to explain why the current code is safe (if you're
>> saying it is), it assumes much more than that.  call_process assumes
>> Fexpand_file_name doesn't GC, for example, which seems unsafe to me: the
>> function calls Lisp, which may do anything, including modifying
>> Vprocess_environment.
>
> AFAICT, expand-file-name is called before we start using the SSDATA of
> strings in the args[] array.  Or what did I miss?

You're right, thanks.  I got confused between args and new_argv.

The next thing I'd look at is the final call to ENCODE_FILE, called
after new_argv is set up; this ends up in encode_coding_object, which
calls safe_funcall in what seems to me to be an unlikely but possible
code path.  I assume that's unsafe (the safe_ refers to redisplay, not
GC, IIUC)?

While maybe_quit is "safe" because it inhibits GC, I believe it can
still call the debugger, which might require more memory than is
available until GC is re-enabled.

>> Regardless of what you're saying, such assumptions need to be spelled
>> out.  Where they are made, that is, not in a utility function.
>
> I'm okay with spelling out these assumptions.

Excellent.  Now we just need to establish what they are :-)

>> Yes, make_environment_block does say its callers can't run GC, but
>> call_process doesn't indicate when and how it establishes a no-GC
>> assumption.
>
> What would be needed to indicate that?

I'd prefer a pair of macros (no-ops in regular builds) to comments, but
there is no obvious best solution here.

My proposal would be to remove most (ideally, all, and then we're done)
no-GC assumptions, and put the few ones that must remain into separate
function bodies for the no-GC / possible-GC cases.  Then we can put the
no-GC function bodies into a separate section and prohibit references
from no-GC to possible-GC functions, and have the linker check that.

>> > Is that assumption false with MPS?
>>
>> As we agreed, code should be written to assume GC can strike at any
>> time.
>
> I don't think we agreed to that.  At least I didn't, not in this
> general form.  It would be a huge job to make all of our code comply
> with this.

I said "That's what you should think: GC can strike at any time", and
you said "The same is true with the old GC".  I misread that as
agreement.

>> IIUC, Gerd explained that the old GC can still move the string *data*
>> used in that structure, even if the string metadata stays in place.
>
> If string data is moved, then accessing the old pointer would trigger
> the barrier and MPS will do its thing, not?

Sorry, but I think I'm confused here.

IIUC, MPS doesn't currently use barriers on data that is moved (it
could, so the data is copied lazily, but I don't think that's what you
meant), it uses barriers on data that contains references that may not
have been fixed.

If a pointer to "old" data is ever exposed to Emacs, we lose, because
MPS will reuse the memory for new data, which might be behind a barrier.

If we ever do:

   static Lisp_Object unmarked;
   unmarked = string;
   ... trigger GC here ...
   puts (SDATA (unmarked);

the most likely outcome (thanks to Gerd for the hint) is that
nonsensical data is printed, because the string data was reused for
another string; less likely, but possibly, the data is reused for a
different pool (with barriers) and we'd get a SIGSEGV; even less likely,
puts() will call write() directly and we get an EFAULT, and glibc does
whatever glibc does in that case (set errno, I hope).

Accessing the old pointer is never okay.  MPS can't fix it, and doesn't
make catching such errors easy.

> To clarify, I was trying to understand whether the error message
> reported by Ihor in another thread could have happened because of GC
> in this are of the code.

I currently think that Ihor's test case calls execve () with nonsensical
"environment" strings a lot, and once in a while they'll even be behind
the barrier which causes an EFAULT.  GNU/Linux seems relatively
forgiving about strings without "=" in the envp, for whatever reason.

Pip