Re: [PATCH v6 0/3] Implement IOCTL to get and/or the clear info about PTEs

Muhammad Usama Anjum
2022-11-30T11:42:35Z

On 11/21/22 8:55 PM, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 21.11.22 16:00, Muhammad Usama Anjum wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> Thank you for replying.
>>
>> On 11/14/22 8:46 PM, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>> The soft-dirtiness is stored in the PTE. VMA is marked dirty to store the
>>>> dirtiness for reused regions. Clearing the soft-dirty status of whole
>>>> process is straight forward. When we want to clear/monitor the
>>>> soft-dirtiness of a part of the virtual memory, there is a lot of internal
>>>> noise. We don't want the non-dirty pages to become dirty because of how
>>>> the
>>>> soft-dirty feature has been working. Soft-dirty feature wasn't being used
>>>> the way we want to use now. While monitoring a part of memory, it is not
>>>> acceptable to get non-dirty pages as dirty. Non-dirty pages become dirty
>>>> when the two VMAs are merged without considering if they both are dirty or
>>>> not (34228d473efe). To monitor changes over the memory, sometimes VMAs are
>>>> split to clear the soft-dirty bit in the VMA flags. But sometimes kernel
>>>> decide to merge them backup. It is so waste of resources.
>>>
>>> Maybe you'd want a per-process option to not merge if the VM_SOFTDIRTY
>>> property differs. But that might be just one alternative for handling this
>>> case.
>>>
>>>>
>>>> To keep things consistent, the default behavior of the IOCTL is to output
>>>> even the extra non-dirty pages as dirty from the kernel noise. A optional
>>>> PAGEMAP_NO_REUSED_REGIONS flag is added for those use cases which aren't
>>>> tolerant of extra non-dirty pages. This flag can be considered as
>>>> something
>>>> which is by-passing the already present buggy implementation in the
>>>> kernel.
>>>> It is not buggy per say as the issue can be solved if we don't allow the
>>>> two VMA which have different soft-dirty bits to get merged. But we are
>>>> allowing that so that the total number of VMAs doesn't increase. This was
>>>> acceptable at the time, but now with the use case of monitoring a part of
>>>> memory for soft-dirty doesn't want this merging. So either we need to
>>>> revert 34228d473efe and PAGEMAP_NO_REUSED_REGIONS flag will not be needed
>>>> or we should allow PAGEMAP_NO_REUSED_REGIONS or similar mechanism to
>>>> ignore
>>>> the extra dirty pages which aren't dirty in reality.
>>>>
>>>> When PAGEMAP_NO_REUSED_REGIONS flag is used, only the PTEs are checked to
>>>> find if the pages are dirty. So re-used regions cannot be detected. This
>>>> has the only side-effect of not checking the VMAs. So this is
>>>> limitation of
>>>> using this flag which should be acceptable in the current state of code.
>>>> This limitation is okay for the users as they can clear the soft-dirty bit
>>>> of the VMA before starting to monitor a range of memory for
>>>> soft-dirtiness.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Please separate that part out from the other changes; I am still not
>>>>> convinced that we want this and what the semantical implications are.
>>>>>
>>>>> Let's take a look at an example: can_change_pte_writable()
>>>>>
>>>>>       /* Do we need write faults for softdirty tracking? */
>>>>>       if (vma_soft_dirty_enabled(vma) && !pte_soft_dirty(pte))
>>>>>           return false;
>>>>>
>>>>> We care about PTE softdirty tracking, if it is enabled for the VMA.
>>>>> Tracking is enabled if: vma_soft_dirty_enabled()
>>>>>
>>>>>       /*
>>>>>        * Soft-dirty is kind of special: its tracking is enabled when
>>>>>        * the vma flags not set.
>>>>>        */
>>>>>       return !(vma->vm_flags & VM_SOFTDIRTY);
>>>>>
>>>>> Consequently, if VM_SOFTDIRTY is set, we are not considering the
>>>>> soft_dirty
>>>>> PTE bits accordingly.
>>>> Sorry, I'm unable to completely grasp the meaning of the example. We have
>>>> followed clear_refs_write() to write the soft-dirty bit clearing code in
>>>> the current patch. Dirtiness of the VMA and the PTE may be set
>>>> independently. Newer allocated memory has dirty bit set in the VMA. When
>>>> something is written the memory, the soft dirty bit is set in the PTEs as
>>>> well regardless if the soft dirty bit is set in the VMA or not.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Let me try to find a simple explanation:
>>>
>>> After clearing a SOFTDIRTY PTE flag inside an area with VM_SOFTDIRTY set,
>>> there are ways that PTE could get written to and it could become dirty,
>>> without the PTE becoming softdirty.
>>>
>>> Essentially, inside a VMA with VM_SOFTDIRTY set, the PTE softdirty values
>>> might be stale: there might be entries that are softdirty even though the
>>> PTE is *not* marked softdirty.
>> Can someone please share the example to reproduce this? In all of my
>> testing, even if I ignore VM_SOFTDIRTY and only base my decision of
>> soft-dirtiness on individual pages, it always passes.
>
> Quick reproducer (the first and easiest one that triggered :) )
> attached.
>
> With no kernel changes, it works as expected.
>
> # ./softdirty_mprotect
>
>
> With the following kernel change to simulate what you propose it fails:
>
> diff --git a/fs/proc/task_mmu.c b/fs/proc/task_mmu.c
> index d22687d2e81e..f2c682bf7f64 100644
> --- a/fs/proc/task_mmu.c
> +++ b/fs/proc/task_mmu.c
> @@ -1457,8 +1457,8 @@ static pagemap_entry_t pte_to_pagemap_entry(struct
> pagemapread *pm,
>                 flags |= PM_FILE;
>         if (page && !migration && page_mapcount(page) == 1)
>                 flags |= PM_MMAP_EXCLUSIVE;
> -       if (vma->vm_flags & VM_SOFTDIRTY)
> -               flags |= PM_SOFT_DIRTY;
> +       //if (vma->vm_flags & VM_SOFTDIRTY)
> +       //      flags |= PM_SOFT_DIRTY;
>
>         return make_pme(frame, flags);
>  }
>
>
> # ./softdirty_mprotect
> Page #1 should be softdirty
>
Thank you so much for sharing the issue and reproducer.

After remapping the second part of the memory and m-protecting +
m-unprotecting the whole memory, the PTE of the first half of the memory
doesn't get marked as soft dirty even after writing multiple times to it.
Even if soft-dirtiness is cleared on the whole process, the PTE of the
first half memory doesn't get dirty. This seems like more of a bug in
mprotect. The mprotect should not mess up with the soft-dirty flag in the PTEs.

I'm debugging this. I hope to find the issue soon. Soft-dirty tracking in
PTEs should be working correctly irrespective of the VM_SOFTDIRTY is set or
not on the VMA.

Cyrill has said in [1]:
> ioctl might be an option indeed
It brings some hope to this patch-set.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/Y4W0axw0ZgORtfkt@grain/

--
BR,
Muhammad Usama Anjum