linux-kernel - Re: exec error: BUG: Bad rss-counter

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Message-ID: <m1blc1gxdx.fsf@fess.ebiederm.org>
Date:   Tue, 02 Mar 2021 13:37:30 -0600
From:   ebiederm@...ssion.com (Eric W. Biederman)
To:     Ilya Lipnitskiy <ilya.lipnitskiy@...il.com>
Cc:     linux-mm@...ck.org,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        linux-fsdevel <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: exec error: BUG: Bad rss-counter

Ilya Lipnitskiy <ilya.lipnitskiy@...il.com> writes:

> On Mon, Mar 1, 2021 at 12:43 PM Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@...ssion.com> wrote:
>>
>> Ilya Lipnitskiy <ilya.lipnitskiy@...il.com> writes:
>>
>> > Eric, All,
>> >
>> > The following error appears when running Linux 5.10.18 on an embedded
>> > MIPS mt7621 target:
>> > [    0.301219] BUG: Bad rss-counter state mm:(ptrval) type:MM_ANONPAGES val:1
>> >
>> > Being a very generic error, I started digging and added a stack dump
>> > before the BUG:
>> > Call Trace:
>> > [<80008094>] show_stack+0x30/0x100
>> > [<8033b238>] dump_stack+0xac/0xe8
>> > [<800285e8>] __mmdrop+0x98/0x1d0
>> > [<801a6de8>] free_bprm+0x44/0x118
>> > [<801a86a8>] kernel_execve+0x160/0x1d8
>> > [<800420f4>] call_usermodehelper_exec_async+0x114/0x194
>> > [<80003198>] ret_from_kernel_thread+0x14/0x1c
>> >
>> > So that's how I got to looking at fs/exec.c and noticed quite a few
>> > changes last year. Turns out this message only occurs once very early
>> > at boot during the very first call to kernel_execve. current->mm is
>> > NULL at this stage, so acct_arg_size() is effectively a no-op.
>>
>> If you believe this is a new error you could bisect the kernel
>> to see which change introduced the behavior you are seeing.
>>
>> > More digging, and I traced the RSS counter increment to:
>> > [<8015adb4>] add_mm_counter_fast+0xb4/0xc0
>> > [<80160d58>] handle_mm_fault+0x6e4/0xea0
>> > [<80158aa4>] __get_user_pages.part.78+0x190/0x37c
>> > [<8015992c>] __get_user_pages_remote+0x128/0x360
>> > [<801a6d9c>] get_arg_page+0x34/0xa0
>> > [<801a7394>] copy_string_kernel+0x194/0x2a4
>> > [<801a880c>] kernel_execve+0x11c/0x298
>> > [<800420f4>] call_usermodehelper_exec_async+0x114/0x194
>> > [<80003198>] ret_from_kernel_thread+0x14/0x1c
>> >
>> > In fact, I also checked vma_pages(bprm->vma) and lo and behold it is set to 1.
>> >
>> > How is fs/exec.c supposed to handle implied RSS increments that happen
>> > due to page faults when discarding the bprm structure? In this case,
>> > the bug-generating kernel_execve call never succeeded, it returned -2,
>> > but I didn't trace exactly what failed.
>>
>> Unless I am mistaken any left over pages should be purged by exit_mmap
>> which is called by mmput before mmput calls mmdrop.
> Good to know. Some more digging and I can say that we hit this error
> when trying to unmap PFN 0 (is_zero_pfn(pfn) returns TRUE,
> vm_normal_page returns NULL, zap_pte_range does not decrement
> MM_ANONPAGES RSS counter). Is my understanding correct that PFN 0 is
> usable, but special? Or am I totally off the mark here?

It would be good to know if that is the page that get_user_pages_remote
returned to copy_string_kernel.  The zero page that is always zero,
should never be returned when a writable mapping is desired.

> Here is the (optimized) stack trace when the counter does not get decremented:
> [<8015b078>] vm_normal_page+0x114/0x1a8
> [<8015dc98>] unmap_page_range+0x388/0xacc
> [<8015e5a0>] unmap_vmas+0x6c/0x98
> [<80166194>] exit_mmap+0xd8/0x1ac
> [<800290c0>] mmput+0x58/0xf8
> [<801a6f8c>] free_bprm+0x2c/0xc4
> [<801a8890>] kernel_execve+0x160/0x1d8
> [<800420e0>] call_usermodehelper_exec_async+0x114/0x194
> [<80003198>] ret_from_kernel_thread+0x14/0x1c
>
>>
>> AKA it looks very very fishy this happens and this does not look like
>> an execve error.
> I think you are right, I'm probably wrong to bother you. However,
> since the thread is already started, let me add linux-mm here :)

It happens during exec.  I don't mind looking and pointing you a useful
direction.

>>
>> On the other hand it would be good to know why kernel_execve is failing.
>> Then the error handling paths could be scrutinized, and we can check to
>> see if everything that should happen on an error path does.
> I can check on this, but likely it's the init system not doing things
> quite in the right order on my platform, or something similar. The
> error is ENOENT from do_open_execat().

That does narrow things down considerably.
After the error all we do is:
Clear in_execve and fs->in_exec.
Return from bprm_execve
Call free_bprm
Which does:
	if (bprm->mm) {
		acct_arg_size(bprm, 0);
		mmput(bprm->mm);
	}

So it really needs to be the mmput that cleans things up.\

I would really verify the correspondence between what get_arg_page
returns and what gets freed in mmput if it is not too difficult.
I think it should just be a page or two.

Eric