Re: [PATCH] x86/mm/pat: acquire mmap lock on page table free to avoid ptdump UAF

[Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>]

On 7/10/26 11:53, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 10, 2026 at 09:26:48AM -0700, Dave Hansen wrote:
>> 1. We could just bite the bullet and have separate ptdump files for the
>>    top and bottom of the address space:
>> 	current_kernel_top
>> 	current_kernel_bottom
>> 	current_user_top
>> 	current_user_bottom
>> 	etc..
>>    Then the lock you take is dictated by the file.
> 
> I mean that'd break userspace though wouldn't it?

It's debugfs. So, yeah, I can see it breaking things, but it's also way
less of a concern. Nobody ever complained about the new PTI file getting
added in there.

>> 2. We could always take both init_mm and current->mm locks. That seems
>>    icky.
> 
> It's actually the least awful of all of these I think :) and the one I
> implemented ([0]).

Oh, cool, I missed that. That's a good pairing with this one!

>> 3. We could have ptdump_walk_pgd() take a different lock for each
>>    'range'. Logically:
>>
>> 	if (range->start < PAGE_OFFSET)
>> 		mmap_write_lock(mm);
>> 	else
>> 		mmap_write_lock(&init_mm);
> 
> I don't love this. It feels a hack for x86 that's put in the wrong place,
> i.e. core code.
> 
> And can you can make this assumption for efi_mm for all arches? Could other
> arches might be weird about this?

Yeah, it's possible they're weird. But I thought the whole idea of
efi_mm was to reuse the non-kernel part of the address space. So oddly
enough it kinda makes sense.

But, yeah, I totally get the reluctance to do this.

>> I'm kinda leaning toward #3.
> 
> Another way forwards might be simply have the caller _call
> ptdump_walk_pgd() twice_ once with the range set to [0, PAGE_OFFSET) passing whatever mm
> != init_mm, and again for [PAGE_OFFSET, ~0) passing init_mm?

Ahh, yeah, that's a good point. It could be done a layer up too.

> Are there cases where you expect to see a delta in the kernel range in x86
> for an arbitrary mm?

Are you asking if current->mm->pgd[255->511] is always the same as
init_mm->pgd[255->511]?

I think so, except for the LDT PGD when PTI is on. That can be different
between mms, and it's a single pgd_t entry. I think Brendan had some
grand plans to use this PGD for other things for ASI as well.

So, yeah, the upper half of the address space is *normally* identical.
But PTI plus set_ldt() is abnormal and we have to deal with it. The only
times that code frees page tables is at exit time and in an error path.

So, how does this interact with mmap_lock? Surely, someone looked at
this recently because the comment says:

 * Lock order:
 *      context.ldt_usr_sem
 *        mmap_lock
 *          context.lock

and not mmap_sem. But, alas, I don't see any mmap_lock anywhere. Someone
changed the comment and didn't look at the code.

Is there some mmap_lock interaction that I'm missing? I don't see it
_anywhere_ in the ldt code.