linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] hugetlbfs: Kill applications that use MAP_NORESERVE with SIGBUS instead of OOM-killer

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Date:	Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:27:05 +0100
From:	Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>
To:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:	Lee Schermerhorn <lee.schermerhorn@...com>,
	David Rientjes <rientjes@...gle.com>,
	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@...ck.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] hugetlbfs: Kill applications that use MAP_NORESERVE
	with SIGBUS instead of OOM-killer

On Tue, Apr 20, 2010 at 04:33:07PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:44:07 +0100
> Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie> wrote:
> 
> > Ordinarily, application using hugetlbfs will create mappings with
> > reserves. For shared mappings, these pages are reserved before mmap()
> > returns success and for private mappings, the caller process is
> > guaranteed and a child process that cannot get the pages gets killed
> > with sigbus.
> > 
> > An application that uses MAP_NORESERVE gets no reservations and mmap()
> > will always succeed at the risk the page will not be available at fault
> > time. This might be used for example on very large sparse mappings where the
> > developer is confident the necessary huge pages exist to satisfy all faults
> > even though the whole mapping cannot be backed by huge pages.  Unfortunately,
> > if an allocation does fail, VM_FAULT_OOM is returned to the fault handler
> > which proceeds to trigger the OOM-killer. This is unhelpful.
> > 
> > This patch alters hugetlbfs to kill a process that uses MAP_NORESERVE
> > where huge pages were not available with SIGBUS instead of triggering
> > the OOM killer.
> > 
> > This patch if accepted should also be considered a -stable candidate.
> 
> Why?  The changelog doesn't convey much seriousness?
> 

Because even without hugetlbfs mounted, a user using mmap() can trivially
trigger the OOM-killer because VM_FAULT_OOM is returned (will provide example
program if you like, it's a whopping 24 lines long). It could be considered
a DOS available to an unprivileged user.

> > Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mel@....ul.ie>
> > ---
> >  mm/hugetlb.c |    2 +-
> >  1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> > 
> > diff --git a/mm/hugetlb.c b/mm/hugetlb.c
> > index 6034dc9..af2d907 100644
> > --- a/mm/hugetlb.c
> > +++ b/mm/hugetlb.c
> > @@ -1038,7 +1038,7 @@ static struct page *alloc_huge_page(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
> >  		page = alloc_buddy_huge_page(h, vma, addr);
> >  		if (!page) {
> >  			hugetlb_put_quota(inode->i_mapping, chg);
> > -			return ERR_PTR(-VM_FAULT_OOM);
> > +			return ERR_PTR(-VM_FAULT_SIGBUS);
> >  		}
> >  	}
> >  
> 
> This affects hugetlb_cow() as well?
> 

Yes. I feel there is a failure case in there, but I didn't create one.
It would need a fairly specific target in terms of the faulting application
and the hugepage pool size. The hugetlb_no_page path is much easier to hit
but both might as well be closed.

-- 
Mel Gorman
Part-time Phd Student                          Linux Technology Center
University of Limerick                         IBM Dublin Software Lab
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