linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v3 07/13] mm, swap: hold a reference during scan and cleanup flag usage

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Message-ID: <CAMgjq7CyHyoCjeBf0eNAWAFDLRf9AYbmMGG9=QTK5v5fFNm1pw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Jan 2025 13:34:38 +0800
From: Kairui Song <ryncsn@...il.com>
To: Baoquan He <bhe@...hat.com>
Cc: linux-mm@...ck.org, Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, 
	Chris Li <chrisl@...nel.org>, Barry Song <v-songbaohua@...o.com>, 
	Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@....com>, Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>, 
	Yosry Ahmed <yosryahmed@...gle.com>, "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@...ux.alibaba.com>, 
	Nhat Pham <nphamcs@...il.com>, Johannes Weiner <hannes@...xchg.org>, 
	Kalesh Singh <kaleshsingh@...gle.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 07/13] mm, swap: hold a reference during scan and
 cleanup flag usage

On Sat, Jan 4, 2025 at 1:46 PM Baoquan He <bhe@...hat.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/31/24 at 01:46am, Kairui Song wrote:
> > From: Kairui Song <kasong@...cent.com>
> >
> > The flag SWP_SCANNING was used as an indicator of whether a device
> > is being scanned for allocation, and prevents swapoff. Combined with
> > SWP_WRITEOK, they work as a set of barriers for a clean swapoff:
> >
> > 1. Swapoff clears SWP_WRITEOK, allocation requests will see
> >    ~SWP_WRITEOK and abort as it's serialized by si->lock.
> > 2. Swapoff unuses all allocated entries.
> > 3. Swapoff waits for SWP_SCANNING flag to be cleared, so ongoing
> >    allocations will stop, preventing UAF.
> > 4. Now swapoff can free everything safely.
> >
> > This will make the allocation path have a hard dependency on
> > si->lock. Allocation always have to acquire si->lock first for
> > setting SWP_SCANNING and checking SWP_WRITEOK.
> >
> > This commit removes this flag, and just uses the existing per-CPU
> > refcount instead to prevent UAF in step 3, which serves well for
> > such usage without dependency on si->lock, and scales very well too.
> > Just hold a reference during the whole scan and allocation process.
> > Swapoff will kill and wait for the counter.
> >
> > And for preventing any allocation from happening after step 1 so the
> > unuse in step 2 can ensure all slots are free, swapoff will acquire
> > the ci->lock of each cluster one by one to ensure all allocations
> > see ~SWP_WRITEOK and abort.
>
> Changing to use si->users is great, while wondering why we need acquire =
> each ci->lock now. After setup 1, we have cleared SWP_WRITEOK, and take
> the si off swap_avail_heads list. No matter what, we just need wait for
> p->comm's completion and continue, why bothering to loop for the
> ci->lock acquiring?
>

Hi Baoquan,

Waiting for p->comm's completion must be done after unuse is called
(unuse will need to take the si->users refcound, so it can't be dead
yet), but unuse must be called after no one will allocate any new
entry. That is guaranteed by the loop ci->lock acquiring.