linux-kernel - Re: Fwd: Memory corruption in multithreaded user space program while calling fork

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Date:   Sat, 8 Jul 2023 10:39:36 -0700
From:   Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Thorsten Leemhuis <regressions@...mhuis.info>,
        Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,
        Bagas Sanjaya <bagasdotme@...il.com>,
        Jacob Young <jacobly.alt@...il.com>,
        Laurent Dufour <ldufour@...ux.ibm.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux Memory Management <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Linux PowerPC <linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org>,
        Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@...ts.infradead.org>,
        Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Linux regressions mailing list <regressions@...ts.linux.dev>
Subject: Re: Fwd: Memory corruption in multithreaded user space program
 while calling fork

On Sat, 8 Jul 2023 10:29:42 -0700 Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Sat, 8 Jul 2023 at 04:35, Thorsten Leemhuis
> <regressions@...mhuis.info> wrote:
> >
> > The plan since early this week is to mark CONFIG_PER_VMA_LOCK as broken;
> > latest patch that does this is this one afaics:
> 
> Bah.
> 
> Both marking it as broken and the pending fix seems excessive.
> 
> Why isn't the trivial fix just to say "yes, fork() gets the mmap_lock
> for writing for a reason, and that reason is that it acts kind of like
> mprotect()".
> 
> And then just do what those functions do.
> 
> IOW, why isn't the fix just to do
> 
>   --- a/kernel/fork.c
>   +++ b/kernel/fork.c
>   @@ -686,6 +686,7 @@ static __latent_entropy int dup_mmap(struct mm_struct *mm,
>         for_each_vma(old_vmi, mpnt) {
>                 struct file *file;
> 
>   +             vma_start_write(mpnt);
>                 if (mpnt->vm_flags & VM_DONTCOPY) {
>                         vm_stat_account(mm, mpnt->vm_flags, -vma_pages(mpnt));
>                         continue;
> 
> and be done with this? Yes, we could move it down a bit more, ignoring
> the VM_DONTCOPY vma's, but they are so uncommon as to not matter, so
> who cares?

That was the v1 fix, but after some discussion
(https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230705063711.2670599-1-surenb@google.com)
it was decided to take the "excessive" approach.

Also, this change needs a couple more updates:
https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230707043211.3682710-1-surenb@google.com
https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20230707043211.3682710-2-surenb@google.com

So I'm thinking it's best to disable the feature in 6.4.x and reenable
it for 6.5 once all this is sorted out.