Re: [PATCH] dma-buf: Require VM_PFNMAP vma for mmap

[Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca>]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2022 at 06:08:00PM +0100, Daniel Vetter wrote:
> tldr; DMA buffers aren't normal memory, expecting that you can use
> them like that (like calling get_user_pages works, or that they're
> accounting like any other normal memory) cannot be guaranteed.
> 
> Since some userspace only runs on integrated devices, where all
> buffers are actually all resident system memory, there's a huge
> temptation to assume that a struct page is always present and useable
> like for any more pagecache backed mmap. This has the potential to
> result in a uapi nightmare.
> 
> To stop this gap require that DMA buffer mmaps are VM_PFNMAP, which
> blocks get_user_pages and all the other struct page based
> infrastructure for everyone. In spirit this is the uapi counterpart to
> the kernel-internal CONFIG_DMABUF_DEBUG.
> 
> Motivated by a recent patch which wanted to swich the system dma-buf
> heap to vm_insert_page instead of vm_insert_pfn.
> 
> v2:
> 
> Jason brought up that we also want to guarantee that all ptes have the
> pte_special flag set, to catch fast get_user_pages (on architectures
> that support this). Allowing VM_MIXEDMAP (like VM_SPECIAL does) would
> still allow vm_insert_page, but limiting to VM_PFNMAP will catch that.
> 
> From auditing the various functions to insert pfn pte entires
> (vm_insert_pfn_prot, remap_pfn_range and all it's callers like
> dma_mmap_wc) it looks like VM_PFNMAP is already required anyway, so
> this should be the correct flag to check for.

I didn't look at how this actually gets used, but it is a bit of a
pain to insert a lifetime controlled object like a struct page as a
special PTE/VM_PFNMAP

How is the lifetime model implemented here? How do you know when
userspace has finally unmapped the page?

Jason