Re: KVM: MMU: rmap_write_protect() hugepage iteration bug

Andrea Arcangeli
2008-06-08T01:54:58Z

On Sat, Jun 07, 2008 at 09:27:36PM -0300, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
>
> rmap_next() expects the "spte" argument to be NULL whenever there's only
> one remaining entry in the descriptor. That is, it was not designed to
> handle changes in the chain while iterating.
>
> This bug cripples rmap_write_protect() so that it won't nuke all
> writable large mappings to a particular gfn.

Better than before but the patched version will still not nuke all
writeable sptes (I did exactly the same mistake once).

I found out the trouble the hard way with a trace of ksm kprobe
wp_notifier faults, and that's this reordering here:

desc->shadow_ptes[i] = desc->shadow_ptes[j];
desc->shadow_ptes[j] = NULL;

In short there's no way to mix rmap_next and rmap_remove in the same
loop as rmap_remove will reorder stuff in the array, so using the
next_spte as pointer will lead to missing the sptes after the
next_spte that have been reordered in place of the spte just before
the next_spte. This was quite subtle issue as it's not immediately
evident the first time you read rmap_remove internals.

rmap_remove invocation requires to restart from scratch (or
alternatively to avoid restarting from scratch, we'd need to extend
the rmap methods to provide that functionality, something like
rmap_next_safe that would be robust against rmap_remove if used in the
same way you did now with rmap_next).

For now this will fix it for real.

Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@qumranet.com>

diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/mmu.c b/arch/x86/kvm/mmu.c
index aaccc40..9e4622c 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/mmu.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/mmu.c
@@ -641,8 +641,9 @@ static void rmap_write_protect(struct kvm *kvm, u64 gfn)
--kvm->stat.lpages;
set_shadow_pte(spte, shadow_trap_nonpresent_pte);
write_protected = 1;
- }
- spte = rmap_next(kvm, rmapp, spte);
+ spte = rmap_next(kvm, rmapp, NULL);
+ } else
+ spte = rmap_next(kvm, rmapp, spte);
}

if (write_protected)