Re: [PATCH 1/1] userfaultfd: do not block on locking a large folio with raised refcount

Peter Xu
2025-02-25T21:32:15Z

On Tue, Feb 25, 2025 at 12:46:13PM -0800, Suren Baghdasaryan wrote:
> Lokesh recently raised an issue about UFFDIO_MOVE getting into a deadlock
> state when it goes into split_folio() with raised folio refcount.
> split_folio() expects the reference count to be exactly
> mapcount + num_pages_in_folio + 1 (see can_split_folio()) and fails with
> EAGAIN otherwise. If multiple processes are trying to move the same
> large folio, they raise the refcount (all tasks succeed in that) then
> one of them succeeds in locking the folio, while others will block in
> folio_lock() while keeping the refcount raised. The winner of this
> race will proceed with calling split_folio() and will fail returning
> EAGAIN to the caller and unlocking the folio. The next competing process
> will get the folio locked and will go through the same flow. In the
> meantime the original winner will be retried and will block in
> folio_lock(), getting into the queue of waiting processes only to repeat
> the same path. All this results in a livelock.
> An easy fix would be to avoid waiting for the folio lock while holding
> folio refcount, similar to madvise_free_huge_pmd() where folio lock is
> acquired before raising the folio refcount.
> Modify move_pages_pte() to try locking the folio first and if that fails
> and the folio is large then return EAGAIN without touching the folio
> refcount. If the folio is single-page then split_folio() is not called,
> so we don't have this issue.
> Lokesh has a reproducer [1] and I verified that this change fixes the
> issue.
>
> [1] https://github.com/lokeshgidra/uffd_move_ioctl_deadlock
>
> Reported-by: Lokesh Gidra <lokeshgidra@google.com>
> Signed-off-by: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>

Reviewed-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>

One question irrelevant of this change below..

> ---
> mm/userfaultfd.c | 17 ++++++++++++++++-
> 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/mm/userfaultfd.c b/mm/userfaultfd.c
> index 867898c4e30b..f17f8290c523 100644
> --- a/mm/userfaultfd.c
> +++ b/mm/userfaultfd.c
> @@ -1236,6 +1236,7 @@ static int move_pages_pte(struct mm_struct *mm, pmd_t *dst_pmd, pmd_t *src_pmd,
> */
> if (!src_folio) {
> struct folio *folio;
> + bool locked;
>
> /*
> * Pin the page while holding the lock to be sure the
> @@ -1255,12 +1256,26 @@ static int move_pages_pte(struct mm_struct *mm, pmd_t *dst_pmd, pmd_t *src_pmd,
> goto out;
> }
>
> + locked = folio_trylock(folio);
> + /*
> + * We avoid waiting for folio lock with a raised refcount
> + * for large folios because extra refcounts will result in
> + * split_folio() failing later and retrying. If multiple
> + * tasks are trying to move a large folio we can end
> + * livelocking.
> + */
> + if (!locked && folio_test_large(folio)) {
> + spin_unlock(src_ptl);
> + err = -EAGAIN;
> + goto out;
> + }
> +
> folio_get(folio);
> src_folio = folio;
> src_folio_pte = orig_src_pte;
> spin_unlock(src_ptl);
>
> - if (!folio_trylock(src_folio)) {
> + if (!locked) {
> pte_unmap(&orig_src_pte);
> pte_unmap(&orig_dst_pte);

.. just notice this. Are these problematic? I mean, orig_*_pte are stack
variables, afaict. I'd expect these things blow on HIGHPTE..

> src_pte = dst_pte = NULL;
>
> base-commit: 801d47bd96ce22acd43809bc09e004679f707c39
> --
> 2.48.1.658.g4767266eb4-goog
>

--
Peter Xu