Re: [PATCH RFC v3 1/2] mm: Add personality flag to limit address to 47 bits

Arnd Bergmann
2024-09-10T09:14:20Z

On Mon, Sep 9, 2024, at 23:22, Charlie Jenkins wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 06, 2024 at 10:52:34AM +0100, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 06, 2024 at 09:14:08AM GMT, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> The intent is to optionally be able to run a process that keeps higher bits
>> free for tagging and to be sure no memory mapping in the process will
>> clobber these (correct me if I'm wrong Charlie! :)
>>
>> So you really wouldn't want this if you are using tagged pointers, you'd
>> want to be sure literally nothing touches the higher bits.

My understanding was that the purpose of the existing design
is to allow applications to ask for a high address without having
to resort to the complexity of MAP_FIXED.

In particular, I'm sure there is precedent for applications that
want both tagged pointers (for most mappings) and untagged pointers
(for large mappings). With a per-mm_struct or per-task_struct
setting you can't do that.

> Various architectures handle the hint address differently, but it
> appears that the only case across any architecture where an address
> above 47 bits will be returned is if the application had a hint address
> with a value greater than 47 bits and was using the MAP_FIXED flag.
> MAP_FIXED bypasses all other checks so I was assuming that it would be
> logical for MAP_FIXED to bypass this as well. If MAP_FIXED is not set,
> then the intent is for no hint address to cause a value greater than 47
> bits to be returned.

I don't think the MAP_FIXED case is that interesting here because
it has to work in both fixed and non-fixed mappings.

>> This would be more consistent vs. other arches.
>
> Yes riscv is an outlier here. The reason I am pushing for something like
> a flag to restrict the address space rather than setting it to be the
> default is it seems like if applications are relying on upper bits to be
> free, then they should be explicitly asking the kernel to keep them free
> rather than assuming them to be free.

Let's see what the other architectures do and then come up with
a way that fixes the pointer tagging case first on those that are
broken. We can see if there needs to be an extra flag after that.
Here is what I found:

- x86_64 uses DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW of BIT(47), uses a 57 bit
address space when an addr hint is passed.
- arm64 uses DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW of BIT(47) or BIT(48), returns
higher 52-bit addresses when either a hint is passed or
CONFIG_EXPERT and CONFIG_ARM64_FORCE_52BIT is set (this
is a debugging option)
- ppc64 uses a DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW of BIT(47) or BIT(48),
returns 52 bit address when an addr hint is passed
- riscv uses a DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW of BIT(47) but only uses
it for allocating the stack below, ignoring it for normal
mappings
- s390 has no DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW but tried to allocate in
the current number of pgtable levels and only upgrades to
the next level (31, 42, 53, 64 bits) if a hint is passed or
the current level is exhausted.
- loongarch64 has no DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW, and a default VA
space of 47 bits (16K pages, 3 levels), but can support
a 55 bit space (64K pages, 3 levels).
- sparc has no DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW and up to 52 bit VA space.
It may allocate both positive and negative addresses in
there. (?)
- mips64, parisc64 and alpha have no DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW and
at most 48, 41 or 39 address bits, respectively.

I would suggest these changes:

- make riscv enforce DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW like x86_64, arm64
and ppc64, leave it at 47

- add DEFAULT_MAP_WINDOW on loongarch64 (47/48 bits
based on page size), sparc (48 bits) and s390 (unsure if
42, 53, 47 or 48 bits)

- leave the rest unchanged.

Arnd