linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] mm/shmem: fix uninitialized folio in shmem

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Message-ID: <bdb7f7c6-ecf5-4da1-a11a-cc19c77fe4f2@linux.alibaba.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2025 18:08:08 +0800
From: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@...ux.alibaba.com>
To: Barry Song <21cnbao@...il.com>, Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
Cc: akpm@...ux-foundation.org, linux-mm@...ck.org,
 linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, Hugh Dickins <hughd@...gle.com>,
 syzbot+178fff6149127421c2cc@...kaller.appspotmail.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/shmem: fix uninitialized folio in shmem_symlink



On 2025/12/25 12:04, Barry Song wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 25, 2025 at 6:01 AM Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Dec 24, 2025 at 10:40:27PM +1300, Barry Song wrote:
>>> From: Barry Song <baohua@...nel.org>
>>>
>>> Uninitialized folio allocated in shmem_symlink() may be accessed
>>> during swap-out, causing KMSAN BUG:
>>
>> This would be an unfortunate way to fix it.  The vast majority of
>> symlinks are short, and we'll never access past the \0 in normal
>> operation, so we'll be dirtying a lot of cachelines essentially to (1)
>> shut up an automated tool and (2) optimise a corner case.
>>
>> How about this instead which delays zeroing to swapout?
> 
> Matthew, thank you very much for your review, even during Christmas.
> I would like to wish you a happy holiday!
> 
> I am not quite sure, as shm symlinks do not seem very common. Since
> allocating a folio requires a symname longer than 128 bytes (where
> 128 == SHORT_SYMLINK_LEN), such cases appear even rarer.
> 
> BTW, do we need to migrate the owner_2 flag in folio_migrate_flags()?
> If so, I am not quite sure it is worth changing the hotpath to
> accommodate this.

+1. At least for me, using the 'PG_owner_2' flag alone to mark this 
uncommon case doesn't seem quite worthwhile.

>> diff --git a/mm/shmem.c b/mm/shmem.c
>> index ec6c01378e9d..f3b3be1b50fe 100644
>> --- a/mm/shmem.c
>> +++ b/mm/shmem.c
>> @@ -1636,6 +1636,13 @@ int shmem_writeout(struct folio *folio, struct swap_iocb **plug,
>>                  folio_mark_uptodate(folio);
>>          }
>>
>> +       /* Zero out symlink tails to help with compression */
>> +       if (folio_test_owner_2(folio)) {
>> +               struct inode *inode = folio->mapping->host;
>> +               folio_zero_segment(folio, inode->i_size, folio_size(folio));
>> +               folio_clear_owner_2(folio);
>> +       }
>> +
>>          if (!folio_alloc_swap(folio)) {
>>                  bool first_swapped = shmem_recalc_inode(inode, 0, nr_pages);
>>                  int error;
>> @@ -4133,6 +4140,7 @@ static int shmem_symlink(struct mnt_idmap *idmap, struct inode *dir,
>>                  memcpy(folio_address(folio), symname, len);
>>                  folio_mark_uptodate(folio);
>>                  folio_mark_dirty(folio);
>> +               folio_set_owner_2(folio);
>>                  folio_unlock(folio);
>>                  folio_put(folio);
>>          }
> 
> Thanks
> Barry