Re: [PATCH v7 01/14] mm: Add F_SEAL_AUTO_ALLOCATE seal to memfd

Chao Peng
2022-07-25T13:47:15Z

On Thu, Jul 21, 2022 at 11:44:11AM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 06.07.22 10:20, Chao Peng wrote:
> > Normally, a write to unallocated space of a file or the hole of a sparse
> > file automatically causes space allocation, for memfd, this equals to
> > memory allocation. This new seal prevents such automatically allocating,
> > either this is from a direct write() or a write on the previously
> > mmap-ed area. The seal does not prevent fallocate() so an explicit
> > fallocate() can still cause allocating and can be used to reserve
> > memory.
> >
> > This is used to prevent unintentional allocation from userspace on a
> > stray or careless write and any intentional allocation should use an
> > explicit fallocate(). One of the main usecases is to avoid memory double
> > allocation for confidential computing usage where we use two memfds to
> > back guest memory and at a single point only one memfd is alive and we
> > want to prevent memory allocation for the other memfd which may have
> > been mmap-ed previously. More discussion can be found at:
> >
> > https://lkml.org/lkml/2022/6/14/1255
> >
> > Suggested-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
> > Signed-off-by: Chao Peng <chao.p.peng@linux.intel.com>
> > ---
> > include/uapi/linux/fcntl.h | 1 +
> > mm/memfd.c | 3 ++-
> > mm/shmem.c | 16 ++++++++++++++--
> > 3 files changed, 17 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/include/uapi/linux/fcntl.h b/include/uapi/linux/fcntl.h
> > index 2f86b2ad6d7e..98bdabc8e309 100644
> > --- a/include/uapi/linux/fcntl.h
> > +++ b/include/uapi/linux/fcntl.h
> > @@ -43,6 +43,7 @@
> > #define F_SEAL_GROW 0x0004 /* prevent file from growing */
> > #define F_SEAL_WRITE 0x0008 /* prevent writes */
> > #define F_SEAL_FUTURE_WRITE 0x0010 /* prevent future writes while mapped */
> > +#define F_SEAL_AUTO_ALLOCATE 0x0020 /* prevent allocation for writes */
>
> Why only "on writes" and not "on reads". IIRC, shmem doesn't support the
> shared zeropage, so you'll simply allocate a new page via read() or on
> read faults.

Right, it also prevents read faults.

>
>
> Also, I *think* you can place pages via userfaultfd into shmem. Not sure
> if that would count "auto alloc", but it would certainly bypass fallocate().

Userfaultfd sounds interesting, will further investigate it. But a rough
look sounds it only faults to usrspace for write/read fault, not
write()? Also sounds it operates on vma and userfaultfd_register() takes
mmap_lock which is what we want to avoid for frequent
register/unregister during private/shared memory conversion.

Chao
>
> --
> Thanks,
>
> David / dhildenb