Message-ID: <20250720234203.9126-1-harry.yoo@oracle.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 08:41:58 +0900
From: Harry Yoo <harry.yoo@...cle.com>
To: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Andrey Ryabinin <ryabinin.a.a@...il.com>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Dennis Zhou <dennis@...nel.org>, Tejun Heo <tj@...nel.org>,
        Christoph Lameter <cl@...two.org>
Cc: "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Alexander Potapenko <glider@...gle.com>,
        Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@...il.com>,
        Dmitry Vyukov <dvyukov@...gle.com>,
        Vincenzo Frascino <vincenzo.frascino@....com>,
        Juergen Gross <jgross@...e.com>, Kevin Brodsky <kevin.brodsky@....com>,
        Muchun Song <muchun.song@...ux.dev>,
        Oscar Salvador <osalvador@...e.de>,
        Joao Martins <joao.m.martins@...cle.com>,
        Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>,
        Jane Chu <jane.chu@...cle.com>, Alistair Popple <apopple@...dia.com>,
        Mike Rapoport <rppt@...nel.org>, David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>,
        Gwan-gyeong Mun <gwan-gyeong.mun@...el.com>,
        "Aneesh Kumar K . V" <aneesh.kumar@...ux.ibm.com>, x86@...nel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-mm@...ck.org, Harry Yoo <harry.yoo@...cle.com>
Subject: [PATCH v2 mm-hotfixes 0/5] mm, arch: a more robust approach to sync top level kernel page tables

RFC v1: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20250709131657.5660-1-harry.yoo@oracle.com

RFC v1 -> v2:
- Dropped RFC tag.
- Exposed page table sync code to common code (Mike Rapoport).
- Used only one Fixes: tag in patch 3 instead of two,
  to avoid confusion (Andrew Morton)
- Reused existing ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK and
  arch_sync_kernel_mappings() facility (currently used by vmalloc and
  ioremap) forpage table sync instead of introducing a new interface.

A quick question: Technically, patch 4 and 5 don't necessarily need to be
backported. Does it make sense to backport only patch 1-3?

# The problem: It is easy to miss/overlook page table synchronization

Hi all,

During our internal testing, we started observing intermittent boot
failures when the machine uses 4-level paging and has a large amount
of persistent memory:

  BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: ffffe70000000034
  #PF: supervisor write access in kernel mode
  #PF: error_code(0x0002) - not-present page
  PGD 0 P4D 0 
  Oops: 0002 [#1] SMP NOPTI
  RIP: 0010:__init_single_page+0x9/0x6d
  Call Trace:
   <TASK>
   __init_zone_device_page+0x17/0x5d
   memmap_init_zone_device+0x154/0x1bb
   pagemap_range+0x2e0/0x40f
   memremap_pages+0x10b/0x2f0
   devm_memremap_pages+0x1e/0x60
   dev_dax_probe+0xce/0x2ec [device_dax]
   dax_bus_probe+0x6d/0xc9
   [... snip ...]
   </TASK>

It turns out that the kernel panics while initializing vmemmap
(struct page array) when the vmemmap region spans two PGD entries,
because the new PGD entry is only installed in init_mm.pgd,
but not in the page tables of other tasks.

And looking at __populate_section_memmap():
  if (vmemmap_can_optimize(altmap, pgmap))                                
          // does not sync top level page tables
          r = vmemmap_populate_compound_pages(pfn, start, end, nid, pgmap);
  else                                                                    
          // sync top level page tables in x86
          r = vmemmap_populate(start, end, nid, altmap);

In the normal path, vmemmap_populate() in arch/x86/mm/init_64.c
synchronizes the top level page table (See commit 9b861528a801
("x86-64, mem: Update all PGDs for direct mapping and vmemmap mapping
changes")) so that all tasks in the system can see the new vmemmap area.

However, when vmemmap_can_optimize() returns true, the optimized path
skips synchronization of top-level page tables. This is because
vmemmap_populate_compound_pages() is implemented in core MM code, which
does not handle synchronization of the top-level page tables. Instead,
the core MM has historically relied on each architecture to perform this
synchronization manually.

We're not the first party to encounter a crash caused by not-sync'd
top level page tables: earlier this year, Gwan-gyeong Mun attempted to
address the issue [1] [2] after hitting a kernel panic when x86 code
accessed the vmemmap area before the corresponding top-level entries
were synced. At that time, the issue was believed to be triggered
only when struct page was enlarged for debugging purposes, and the patch
did not get further updates.

It turns out that current approach of relying on each arch to handle
the page table sync manually is fragile because 1) it's easy to forget
to sync the top level page table, and 2) it's also easy to overlook that
the kernel should not access the vmemmap and direct mapping areas before
the sync.

# The solution: Make page table sync more code robust 

To address this, Dave Hansen suggested [3] [4] introducing
{pgd,p4d}_populate_kernel() for updating kernel portion
of the page tables and allow each architecture to explicitly perform
synchronization when installing top-level entries. With this approach,
we no longer need to worry about missing the sync step, reducing the risk
of future regressions.

The new interface reuses existing ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK,
PGTBL_P*D_MODIFIED and arch_sync_kernel_mappings() facility used by
vmalloc and ioremap to synchronize page tables.

pgd_populate_kernel() looks like this:
  #define pgd_populate_kernel(addr, pgd, p4d)                    \               
  do {                                                           \               
         pgd_populate(&init_mm, pgd, p4d);                       \               
         if (ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK & PGTBL_PGD_MODIFIED)     \               
                 arch_sync_kernel_mappings(addr, addr);          \               
  } while (0) 

It is worth noting that vmalloc() and apply_to_range() carefully
synchronizes page tables by calling p*d_alloc_track() and
arch_sync_kernel_mappings(), and thus they are not affected by
this patch series.

This patch series was hugely inspired by Dave Hansen's suggestion and
hence added Suggested-by: Dave Hansen.

Cc stable because lack of this series opens the door to intermittent
boot failures.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20250220064105.808339-1-gwan-gyeong.mun@intel.com
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20250311114420.240341-1-gwan-gyeong.mun@intel.com
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/d1da214c-53d3-45ac-a8b6-51821c5416e4@intel.com
[4] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/4d800744-7b88-41aa-9979-b245e8bf794b@intel.com 

Harry Yoo (5):
  mm: move page table sync declarations to asm/pgalloc.h
  mm: introduce and use {pgd,p4d}_populate_kernel()
  x86/mm: define ARCH_PAGE_TABLE_SYNC_MASK and
    arch_sync_kernel_mappings()
  x86/mm: convert p*d_populate{,_init} to _kernel variants
  x86/mm: drop unnecessary calls to sync_global_pgds() and fold into its
    sole user

 arch/x86/include/asm/pgalloc.h | 22 ++++++++++++++++++++
 arch/x86/mm/init_64.c          | 37 +++++++++++++++++++---------------
 arch/x86/mm/kasan_init_64.c    |  8 ++++----
 include/asm-generic/pgalloc.h  | 30 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 include/linux/vmalloc.h        | 16 ---------------
 mm/kasan/init.c                | 10 ++++-----
 mm/percpu.c                    |  4 ++--
 mm/sparse-vmemmap.c            |  4 ++--
 mm/vmalloc.c                   |  1 +
 9 files changed, 87 insertions(+), 45 deletions(-)

-- 
2.43.0

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