Re: [PATCH 1/4] mm: do not unintentionally overwrite atomic VMA flags

["David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>]

On 10/23/26 15:47, Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) wrote:
> madvise, mlock and mprotect take a copy of a VMA's flags holding only the
> VMA read lock, later writing it back under the write lock (in
> madvise_update_vma(), mlock_fixup(), mlock_vma_pages_range() and
> mprotect_fixup()).
> 
> This was done on the assumption that VMA flags cannot change with a read
> lock held.
> 
> However this changed in commit 2ab7f1bbafc9 ("mm/madvise: allow guard page
> install/remove under VMA lock"), which allowed VM_ATOMIC_SET_ALLOWED
> flags (currently only VMA_MAYBE_GUARD_BIT) to be written concurrently under
> a VMA read lock.
> 
> The actual write itself is safe as this is done under the VMA write lock
> at which point no further concurrent writes can occur, however at this
> point the stale flags mean that these callers can unintentionally overwrite
> atomic flags incorrectly.
> 
> The consequences of this are significant - a missing VMA_MAYBE_GUARD_BIT
> could result in page tables not being copied on fork (the vma_needs_copy()
> check can return false) or being overwritten on file-backed THP
> collapse (the file_backed_vma_is_retractable() can return true).
> 
> Resolve the issue by always taking care to retain existing atomic flags
> when overwriting VMA flags, replacing the inconsistently named
> vma_flags_reset_once() with vma_overwrite_flags() to do so, and always
> invoking it when flags are overwritten like this.
> 
> Reads are a problem too - madvise, mlock and mprotect all compare VMA flags
> without a VMA write lock held via vma_flags_same_pair().
> 
> This has more serious impact, as concurrent changes to atomic VMA flags can
> cause two sets of VMA flags to be wrongly considered different.
> 
> For mprotect and madvise this causes a useless split, but mlock is impacted
> more seriously as it can result in mm->locked_vm underflow.
> 
> Fix this by updating vma_flags_same_pair() to disregard
> VM_ATOMIC_SET_ALLOWED VMAs - VMA equality is the same as VMA mergeability,
> and atomic VMA flags are disregarded when comparing VMA flags for merge -
> so this is justified semantically.
> 
> Additionally, remove the redundant vma_flags_same_mask() and the unused
> vma_flags_same() as part of the change, and replace VM_ATOMIC_SET_ALLOWED
> with VMA_ATOMIC_SET_ALLOWED, using the new VMA flag API.
> 
> Finally, update userland VMA tests to reflect the changes.
> 
> Suggested-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>
> Fixes: 2ab7f1bbafc9 ("mm/madvise: allow guard page install/remove under VMA lock")
> Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
> Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) <ljs@kernel.org>
> ---

Nothing jumped at me

Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>

-- 
Cheers,

David