linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v2 3/5] mm: madvise: implement lightweight guard page mechanism

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Message-ID: <fedd19ce-ea15-4ded-a1b5-ff050de15bba@suse.cz>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2024 22:25:06 +0200
From: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>
To: David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>,
 Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>,
 Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>,
 "Liam R . Howlett" <Liam.Howlett@...cle.com>,
 Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>, "Paul E . McKenney"
 <paulmck@...nel.org>, Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>, linux-mm@...ck.org,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Muchun Song <muchun.song@...ux.dev>,
 Richard Henderson <richard.henderson@...aro.org>,
 Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@...assic.park.msu.ru>, Matt Turner
 <mattst88@...il.com>, Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@...ha.franken.de>,
 "James E . J . Bottomley" <James.Bottomley@...senPartnership.com>,
 Helge Deller <deller@....de>, Chris Zankel <chris@...kel.net>,
 Max Filippov <jcmvbkbc@...il.com>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
 linux-alpha@...r.kernel.org, linux-mips@...r.kernel.org,
 linux-parisc@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
 Shuah Khan <shuah@...nel.org>, Christian Brauner <brauner@...nel.org>,
 linux-kselftest@...r.kernel.org, Sidhartha Kumar
 <sidhartha.kumar@...cle.com>, Jeff Xu <jeffxu@...omium.org>,
 Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>, linux-api@...r.kernel.org,
 John Hubbard <jhubbard@...dia.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 3/5] mm: madvise: implement lightweight guard page
 mechanism

On 10/21/24 22:17, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 21.10.24 22:11, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
>> On 10/20/24 18:20, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
>> 
>> <snip>
>> 
>>> +static long madvise_guard_poison(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
>>> +				 struct vm_area_struct **prev,
>>> +				 unsigned long start, unsigned long end)
>>> +{
>>> +	long err;
>>> +
>>> +	*prev = vma;
>>> +	if (!is_valid_guard_vma(vma, /* allow_locked = */false))
>>> +		return -EINVAL;
>>> +
>>> +	/*
>>> +	 * If we install poison markers, then the range is no longer
>>> +	 * empty from a page table perspective and therefore it's
>>> +	 * appropriate to have an anon_vma.
>>> +	 *
>>> +	 * This ensures that on fork, we copy page tables correctly.
>>> +	 */
>>> +	err = anon_vma_prepare(vma);
>>> +	if (err)
>>> +		return err;
>>> +
>>> +	/*
>>> +	 * Optimistically try to install the guard poison pages first. If any
>>> +	 * non-guard pages are encountered, give up and zap the range before
>>> +	 * trying again.
>>> +	 */
>> 
>> Should the page walker become powerful enough to handle this in one go? :)
>> But sure, if it's too big a task to teach it to zap ptes with all the tlb
>> flushing etc (I assume it's something page walkers don't do today), it makes
>> sense to do it this way.
>> Or we could require userspace to zap first (MADV_DONTNEED), but that would
>> unnecessarily mean extra syscalls for the use case of an allocator debug
>> mode that wants to turn freed memory to guards to catch use after free.
>> So this seems like a good compromise...
> 
> Yes please, KIS.

You mean "require userspace to zap first (MADV_DONTNEED)" ?

I'd normally agree with the KIS principle, but..

> We can always implement support for that later if 

it would either mean later we change behavior (installing guards on
non-zapped PTEs would have to be an error now but maybe start working later,
which is user observable change thus can break somebody)

> really required (leave behavior open when documenting).

and leaving it open when documenting doesn't really mean anything for the
"we don't break userspace" promise vs what the implementation actually does.

Or the changed behavior would need to come with a new MADVISE mode. Not
appealing as it's a mess already.

So since its uapi we should aim for the best from the start.