linux-kernel - Re: [RFC][PATCH] Cross Memory Attach

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Date:	Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:35:02 -0700
From:	ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:	Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>
Cc:	Bryan Donlan <bdonlan@...il.com>,
	Christopher Yeoh <cyeoh@....ibm.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Linux Memory Management List <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Valdis.Kletnieks@...edu, Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
	Robin Holt <holt@....com>
Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH] Cross Memory Attach

Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com> writes:

>  On 09/15/2010 04:46 PM, Bryan Donlan wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 19:58, Avi Kivity<avi@...hat.com>  wrote:
>>
>>> Instead of those two syscalls, how about a vmfd(pid_t pid, ulong start,
>>> ulong len) system call which returns an file descriptor that represents a
>>> portion of the process address space.  You can then use preadv() and
>>> pwritev() to copy memory, and io_submit(IO_CMD_PREADV) and
>>> io_submit(IO_CMD_PWRITEV) for asynchronous variants (especially useful with
>>> a dma engine, since that adds latency).
>>>
>>> With some care (and use of mmu_notifiers) you can even mmap() your vmfd and
>>> access remote process memory directly.
>> Rather than introducing a new vmfd() API for this, why not just add
>> implementations for these more efficient operations to the existing
>> /proc/$pid/mem interface?
>
> Yes, opening that file should be equivalent (and you could certainly implement
> aio via dma for it).

I will second this /proc/$pid/mem is semantically the same and it would
really be good if this patch became a patch optimizing that case.

Otherwise we have code duplication and thus dilution of knowledge in
two different places for no discernable reason.  Hindering long term
maintenance.

+int copy_to_from_process_allowed(struct task_struct *task)
+{
+	/* Allow copy_to_from_process to access another process using
+	   the same critera  as a process would be allowed to ptrace
+	   that same process */
+	const struct cred *cred = current_cred(), *tcred;
+
+	rcu_read_lock();
+	tcred = __task_cred(task);
+	if ((cred->uid != tcred->euid ||
+	     cred->uid != tcred->suid ||
+	     cred->uid != tcred->uid  ||
+	     cred->gid != tcred->egid ||
+	     cred->gid != tcred->sgid ||
+	     cred->gid != tcred->gid) &&
+	    !capable(CAP_SYS_PTRACE)) {
+		rcu_read_unlock();
+		return 0;
+	}
+	rcu_read_unlock();
+	return 1;
+}

This hunk of the patch is a copy of __ptrace_may_access without security
hooks removed.  Both the code duplication, the removal of the dumpable
check and the removal of the security hooks look like a bad idea.

Removing the other checks in check_mem_permission seems reasonable as
those appear to be overly paranoid.

Hmm.  This is weird:

+	/* Get the pages we're interested in */
+	pages_pinned = get_user_pages(task, task->mm, pa,
+				      nr_pages_to_copy,
+				      copy_to, 0, process_pages, NULL);
+
+	if (pages_pinned != nr_pages_to_copy)
+		goto end;
+
+	/* Do the copy for each page */
+	for (i = 0; i < nr_pages_to_copy; i++) {
+		target_kaddr = kmap(process_pages[i]) + start_offset;
+		bytes_to_copy = min(PAGE_SIZE - start_offset,
+				    len - *bytes_copied);
+		if (start_offset)
+			start_offset = 0;
+
+		if (copy_to) {
+			ret = copy_from_user(target_kaddr,
+					     user_buf + *bytes_copied,
+					     bytes_to_copy);
+			if (ret) {
+				kunmap(process_pages[i]);
+				goto end;
+			}
+		} else {
+			ret = copy_to_user(user_buf + *bytes_copied,
+					   target_kaddr, bytes_to_copy);
+			if (ret) {
+				kunmap(process_pages[i]);
+				goto end;
+			}
+		}
+		kunmap(process_pages[i]);
+		*bytes_copied += bytes_to_copy;
+	}
+

That hunk of code appears to be an copy of mm/memmory.c:access_process_vm.
A little more optimized by taking the get_user_pages out of the inner
loop but otherwise pretty much the same code.

So I would argue it makes sense to optimize access_process_vm.

So unless there are fundamental bottlenecks to performance I am not
seeing please optimize the existing code paths in the kernel that do
exactly what you are trying to do.

Thanks,
Eric




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