linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm: Fix the race between collapse and PT

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Message-ID: <a12e9a51-0ee4-4a10-9ec4-d4c0d34ccff9@bytedance.com>
Date: Tue, 5 Aug 2025 18:26:41 +0800
From: Qi Zheng <zhengqi.arch@...edance.com>
To: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@...ux.alibaba.com>,
 David Hildenbrand <david@...hat.com>, Barry Song <21cnbao@...il.com>,
 akpm@...ux-foundation.org, linux-mm@...ck.org
Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Barry Song <v-songbaohua@...o.com>,
 "Lai, Yi" <yi1.lai@...ux.intel.com>,
 Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@...cle.com>,
 Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>, Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
 Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@...gle.com>, Lokesh Gidra
 <lokeshgidra@...gle.com>, Tangquan Zheng <zhengtangquan@...o.com>,
 Lance Yang <ioworker0@...il.com>, Zi Yan <ziy@...dia.com>,
 "Liam R . Howlett" <Liam.Howlett@...cle.com>, Nico Pache
 <npache@...hat.com>, Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@....com>,
 Dev Jain <dev.jain@....com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: Fix the race between collapse and PT_RECLAIM under
 per-vma lock

On 8/5/25 6:07 PM, Baolin Wang wrote:
> 
> 

[...]

> 
>>>
>>> What types of this 'valid page' could be? If __pte_offset_map() returns
>>> non-NULL, then it is a PTE page. Even if it is not the original one, it
>>> should not cause panic. Did I miss some key information? :(
> 
> Sorry for not being clear. Let me try again.
> 
> In the race condition described above, the '_pmd' value is NONE, meaning 
> that when restoring the pmd entry with ‘pmd_populate(mm, pmd, 
> pmd_pgtable(_pmd))’, the 'pmd_pgtable(_pmd)' can return a struct page 
> corresponding to pfn == 0 (cause the '_pmd' is NONE) to populate the pmd 
> entry. Clearly, this pfn == 0 page is not a pagetable page, meaning the 
> corresponding ptl lock of this page is not initialized.
> 
> Additionally, from the boot dmesg, I can see that the BIOS reports an 
> address range with pfn == 0, indicating that there is a struct page 
> initialized for pfn == 0 (possibly a reserved page):
> 
> [    0.000000] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
> [    0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x000000000009fbff] 
> usable
> [    0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000000009fc00-0x000000000009ffff] 
> reserved
> [    0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000000f0000-0x00000000000fffff] 
> reserved
> [    0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x0000000000100000-0x000000007ffdffff] 
> usable
> [    0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x000000007ffe0000-0x000000007fffffff] 
> reserved
> [    0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000feffc000-0x00000000feffffff] 
> reserved
> [    0.000000] BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000fffc0000-0x00000000ffffffff] 
> reserved
> 

Now I understand, thank you very much for your patient explanation!

And for this patch:

Acked-by: Qi Zheng <zhengqi.arch@...edance.com>

Thanks!

> Of course, this is my theoretical analysis from the code perspective. If 
> there are other race conditions, I would be very surprised:)
> 
>> Wasn't the original issue all about a NULL-pointer de-reference while 
>> *locking*?
> 
> Yes.
> 
>> Note that in that kernel config [1] we have CONFIG_DEBUG_SPINLOCK=y, 
>> so likely we will have ALLOC_SPLIT_PTLOCKS set.
>>
>> [1] https://github.com/laifryiee/syzkaller_logs/blob/ 
>> main/250803_193026___pte_offset_map_lock/.config
>>