Re: [PATCH v3 7/7] ARM: implement support for vmap'ed stacks

From: "Russell King (Oracle)" <linux@armlinux.org.uk>
To: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>
Cc: Guillaume Tucker <guillaume.tucker@collabora.com>,
	Tony Lindgren <tony@atomide.com>,
	linux-omap <linux-omap@vger.kernel.org>,
	Linux ARM <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
	Nicolas Pitre <nico@fluxnic.net>, Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>,
	Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>,
	Keith Packard <keithpac@amazon.com>,
	Linus Walleij <linus.walleij@linaro.org>,
	Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com>,
	"kernelci@groups.io" <kernelci@groups.io>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 7/7] ARM: implement support for vmap'ed stacks
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2021 20:06:38 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YZQPTmfjMq5IQeSR@shell.armlinux.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAMj1kXHLushGdSfH3HEUeRuGuZMFS1PUZ+_7vp5dmRHGtjyYfQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Tue, Nov 16, 2021 at 08:28:02PM +0100, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> (+ Tony and linux-omap@)
> 
> On Tue, 16 Nov 2021 at 10:23, Guillaume Tucker
> <guillaume.tucker@collabora.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Ard,
> >
> > Please see the bisection report below about a boot failure on
> > omap4-panda which is pointing to this patch.
> >
> > Reports aren't automatically sent to the public while we're
> > trialing new bisection features on kernelci.org but this one
> > looks valid.
> >
> > Some more details can be found here:
> >
> >   https://linux.kernelci.org/test/case/id/6191b1b97c175a5ade335948/
> >
> > It seems like the kernel just froze after about 3 seconds without
> > any obvious errors in the log.
> >
> > Please let us know if you need any help debugging this issue or
> > if you have a fix to try.
> >
> 
> Thanks for the report.
> 
> I wonder if this might be related to low level platform code running
> off a different stack (maybe in SRAM?) when an interrupt is taken? Or
> using a different set of page tables that are out of sync in terms of
> VMALLOC space mappings?
> 
> Could anyone who speaks OMAP please take a look at the linked boot
> log, and hopefully make sense of it?
> 
> For background, this series enables vmap'ed stacks support for ARMv7,
> which means that the entry code checks whether the stack pointer may
> be pointing into the guard region before the vmalloc'ed stack, and
> kills the task if it looks like the kernel stack overflowed.
> 
> Here's another instance:
> https://linux.kernelci.org/build/id/6193fa5c6c4e1d02bd3358ff/
> 
> Everything builds and boots happily, but odd things happen on OMAP
> based devices: Panda just gives up right after discovering the USB
> controller, and Beagle-XM just starts showing all kinds of weird
> crashes at roughly the same point in the boot.

I haven't looked at the logs yet... but there may be a more
fundamental reason that it may be stalling.

vmalloc space is lazily mapped to process page tables that the
allocation did not happen inside - specifically the L1 entries.

When a new thread is created, you're vmalloc()ing a kernel stack.
This is done in the parent task for the child task. If the child
task doesn't contain the L1 entry for its vmalloc'd stack, then
the first stack access by the child will fault.

The fault processing will be done in the child's context, so we
immediately try to save the state to the child's kernel stack,
which is not yet mapped. The result is another fault, which
triggers yet another fault, etc.

-- 
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