tipc: fix broadcast link synchronization problem

In commit 2d18ac4ba745 ("tipc: extend broadcast link initialization
criteria") we tried to fix a problem with the initial synchronization
of broadcast link acknowledge values. Unfortunately that solution is
not sufficient to solve the issue.

We have seen it happen that LINK_PROTOCOL/STATE packets with a valid
non-zero unicast acknowledge number may bypass BCAST_PROTOCOL
initialization, NAME_DISTRIBUTOR and other STATE packets with invalid
broadcast acknowledge numbers, leading to premature opening of the
broadcast link. When the bypassed packets finally arrive, they are
inadvertently accepted, and the already correctly initialized
acknowledge number in the broadcast receive link is overwritten by
the invalid (zero) value of the said packets. After this the broadcast
link goes stale.

We now fix this by marking the packets where we know the acknowledge
value is or may be invalid, and then ignoring the acks from those.

To this purpose, we claim an unused bit in the header to indicate that
the value is invalid. We set the bit to 1 in the initial BCAST_PROTOCOL
synchronization packet and all initial ("bulk") NAME_DISTRIBUTOR
packets, plus those LINK_PROTOCOL packets sent out before the broadcast
links are fully synchronized.

This minor protocol update is fully backwards compatible.

Reported-by: John Thompson <thompa.atl@gmail.com>
Tested-by: John Thompson <thompa.atl@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Jon Maloy <jon.maloy@ericsson.com>
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>

1 files changed, 1 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/net/tipc/name_distr.c b/net/tipc/name_distr.c
index a04fe9be1c60..c1cfd92de17a 100644
--- a/net/tipc/name_distr.c
+++ b/net/tipc/name_distr.c
@@ -156,6 +156,7 @@ static void named_distribute(struct net *net, struct sk_buff_head *list,
 				pr_warn("Bulk publication failure\n");
 				return;
 			}
+			msg_set_bc_ack_invalid(buf_msg(skb), true);
 			item = (struct distr_item *)msg_data(buf_msg(skb));
 		}