Re: Regression in generic/749 with 8k fsblock size on 6.18-rc1

Dave Chinner
2025-10-16T22:33:23Z

On Thu, Oct 16, 2025 at 11:22:00AM +0100, Kiryl Shutsemau wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 10:57:26AM -0700, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 15, 2025 at 04:59:03PM +0100, Kiryl Shutsemau wrote:
> > > On Tue, Oct 14, 2025 at 10:52:14AM -0700, Darrick J. Wong wrote:
> > > > Hi there,
> > > >
> > > > On 6.18-rc1, generic/749[1] running on XFS with an 8k fsblock size fails
> > > > with the following:
> > > >
> > > > --- /run/fstests/bin/tests/generic/749.out 2025-07-15 14:45:15.170416031 -0700
> > > > +++ /var/tmp/fstests/generic/749.out.bad 2025-10-13 17:48:53.079872054 -0700
> > > > @@ -1,2 +1,10 @@
> > > > QA output created by 749
> > > > +Expected SIGBUS when mmap() reading beyond page boundary
> > > > +Expected SIGBUS when mmap() writing beyond page boundary
> > > > +Expected SIGBUS when mmap() reading beyond page boundary
> > > > +Expected SIGBUS when mmap() writing beyond page boundary
> > > > +Expected SIGBUS when mmap() reading beyond page boundary
> > > > +Expected SIGBUS when mmap() writing beyond page boundary
> > > > +Expected SIGBUS when mmap() reading beyond page boundary
> > > > +Expected SIGBUS when mmap() writing beyond page boundary
> > > > Silence is golden
> > > >
> > > > This test creates small files of various sizes, maps the EOF block, and
> > > > checks that you can read and write to the mmap'd page up to (but not
> > > > beyond) the next page boundary.
> > > >
> > > > For 8k fsblock filesystems on x86, the pagecache creates a single 8k
> > > > folio to cache the entire fsblock containing EOF. If EOF is in the
> > > > first 4096 bytes of that 8k fsblock, then it should be possible to do a
> > > > mmap read/write of the first 4k, but not the second 4k. Memory accesses
> > > > to the second 4096 bytes should produce a SIGBUS.
> > >
> > > Does anybody actually relies on this behaviour (beyond xfstests)?
> >
> > Beats me, but the mmap manpage says:
> ...
> > POSIX 2024 says:
> ...
> > From both I would surmise that it's a reasonable expectation that you
> > can't map basepages beyond EOF and have page faults on those pages
> > succeed.
>
> <Added folks form the commit that introduced generic/749>
>
> Modern kernel with large folios blurs the line of what is the page.
>
> I don't want play spec lawyer. Let's look at real workloads.

Or, more importantly, consider the security-related implications of
the change....

> If there's anything that actually relies on this SIGBUS corner case,
> let's see how we can fix the kernel. But it will cost some CPU cycles.
>
> If it only broke syntactic test case, I'm inclined to say WONTFIX.
>
> Any opinions?

Mapping beyond EOF ranges into userspace address spaces is a
potential security risk. If there is ever a zeroing-beyond-EOF bug
related to large folios (history tells us we are *guaranteed* to
screw this up somewhere in future), then allowing mapping all the
way to the end of the large folio could expose a -lot more- stale
kernel data to userspace than just what the tail of a PAGE_SIZE
faulted region would expose.

Hence allowing applications to successfully fault a (unpredictable)
distance far beyond EOF because the page cache used a large folio
spanning EOF seems, to me, to be a very undesirable behaviour to
expose to userspace.

-Dave.
--
Dave Chinner
david@fromorbit.com