Re: Fwd: Memory corruption in multithreaded user space program while calling fork

Thorsten Leemhuis
2023-07-08T11:35:35Z

[adding Linus to the list of recipients to ensure the fix makes it into
-rc1 (and can finally be backported to -stable).

Linus, here is the backstory, as I assume you haven't seen this yet:

CONFIG_PER_VMA_LOCK (which defaults to Y; merged for v6.4-rc1 in
0bff0aaea03 ("x86/mm: try VMA lock-based page fault handling first"))
sometimes causes memory corruption reported here:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/dbdef34c-3a07-5951-e1ae-e9c6e3cdf51b@kernel.org/
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=217624

The plan since early this week is to mark CONFIG_PER_VMA_LOCK as broken;
latest patch that does this is this one afaics:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230706011400.2949242-3-surenb@google.com/

But that change or something similar hasn't reached you yet afaics;
note, this is the second patch of a series with two patches]

On 05.07.23 17:49, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jul 2023 10:51:57 +0200 "Linux regression tracking (Thorsten Leemhuis)" <regressions@leemhuis.info> wrote:
>
>>>>> I'm in wait-a-few-days-mode on this. To see if we have a backportable
>>>>> fix rather than disabling the feature in -stable.
>>
>> Andrew, how long will you remain in "wait-a-few-days-mode"? Given what
>> Greg said below and that we already had three reports I know of I'd
>> prefer if we could fix this rather sooner than later in mainline --
>> especially as Arch Linux and openSUSE Tumbleweed likely have switched to
>> 6.4.y already or will do so soon.
>
> I'll send today's 2-patch series to Linus today or tomorrow.

That afaics did not happen until now. :-(

This makes me regret that I did not CC Linus earlier. I always feel like
a snitcher when I do that. But in retrospective it seems it would have
been the right thing to do given the problem, as I suspect Linus would
have quickly applied the patch or marked the feature as broken himself.

So thx to this (and a handful of earlier, similar situations) I now
fully made my peace with feeling like a snitcher (I always knew that
it's kinda part of the position). When something in me says "Ick, this
looks bad to my untrained eyes" I'll immediately CC Linus.

Linus, if I take things to far just let me know. But I assume you get a
lot of mails and won't mind a few more.

Ciao, Thorsten (wearing his 'the Linux kernel's regression tracker' hat)
--
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