1604056 - Netlink service triggers kernel panic on LineageOS

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Core :: Networking, defect, P3)

Description

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

Details here: https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/5663#issuecomment-565834747

Comment 1

[Valentin Gosu [:valentin] (he/him)]

Michal, can you take a look if we can mitigate this somehow? Thanks!

Comment 2

[Michal Novotny [:michal]]

It's not clear to me whether we can avoid the crash by changing the way how we construct the message at https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/netwerk/system/netlink/NetlinkService.cpp#552. I guess that it isn't possible and the crash happens whenever a route for a given IPv4 host is queried. Then the only workaround would be to not use NetlinkService because bug 1593693 made route checking non-optional.

Comment 3

[Marco Perez [:mpk]]

This bug affects all the non-EOL'ed non-WebKit Mozilla browsers on Android, e.g. Firefox Preview and Reference Browser.
The device I used for testing was a Samsung Galaxy S2 (GT-I9100) with a fairly current (2020-03-20) build of LineageOS 16.
It is especially ugly, since legacy Firefox for Android is being phased out and the bug causes the whole device to reboot.

Comment 4

[Udo Richter]

LineageOS-based custom roms often update their kernels less frequently than the rest of the rom, so the fix is still not in all LineageOS-16 based roms even with later release dates. Some roms for Galaxy S4 are also still affected, and will likely never get fixed since development focus moved to LineageOS-17.

Comment 5

[Nhi Nguyen (:nhi)]

Do we have data on how widespread this problem is/how many people are affected?

Comment 6

[James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him)]

No, but I can't imagine it's a very large number. AFAIK, Lineage OS is not shipped on any phones by default.

On the other hand, these users are often trying to get out from under Google services, which is one reason they may be turning to Firefox. If we could implement a workaround with a reasonable amount of effort that would be nice. It seems like the easiest thing may be to just disable the netlink service on all Lineage OS devices.

Comment 7

[Dragana Damjanovic [:dragana]]

(In reply to James Willcox (:snorp) ([e-mail]) (he/him) from comment #6)

No, but I can't imagine it's a very large number. AFAIK, Lineage OS is not shipped on any phones by default.

On the other hand, these users are often trying to get out from under Google services, which is one reason they may be turning to Firefox. If we could implement a workaround with a reasonable amount of effort that would be nice. It seems like the easiest thing may be to just disable the netlink service on all Lineage OS devices.

It is not as simple as that, because users would experience some other weird thinks like stall connection. We are look what we can do.

Comment 8

[Kevin Brosnan [Ex-Mozilla]]

Linage OS fixed this over a year ago. The solution is to upgrade to a newer version of the OS. https://github.com/LineageOS/android_kernel_cyanogen_msm8974/commit/f44b4b19da1541fce8440ffa1e59cdb722cf10b5

Suggest closing this as wontfix.