Re: [RFC PATCH v2 1/3] mm/gup: fix gup_fast with dynamic page table folding

Alexander Gordeev
2020-09-10T09:40:42Z

On Wed, Sep 09, 2020 at 03:03:24PM -0300, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 09, 2020 at 07:25:34PM +0200, Gerald Schaefer wrote:
> > I actually had to draw myself a picture to get some hold of
> > this, or rather a walk-through with a certain pud-crossing
> > range in a folded 3-level scenario. Not sure if I would have
> > understood my explanation above w/o that, but I hope you can
> > make some sense out of it. Or draw yourself a picture :-)
>
> What I don't understand is how does anything work with S390 today?
>
> If the fix is only to change pxx_addr_end() then than generic code
> like mm/pagewalk.c will iterate over a *different list* of page table
> entries.
>
> It's choice of entries to look at is entirely driven by pxx_addr_end().
>
> Which suggest to me that mm/pagewalk.c also doesn't work properly
> today on S390 and this issue is not really about stack variables?
>
> Fundamentally if pXX_offset() and pXX_addr_end() must be consistent
> together, if pXX_offset() is folded then pXX_addr_end() must cause a
> single iteration of that level.

Your observation is correct.

Another way to describe the problem is existing pXd_addr_end helpers
could be applied to mismatching levels on s390 (e.g p4d_addr_end
applied to pud or pgd_addr_end applied to p4d). As you noticed,
all *_pXd_range iterators could be called with address ranges that
exceed single pXd table.

However, when it happens with pointers to real page tables (passed to
*_pXd_range iterators) we still operate on valid tables, which just
(lucky for us) happened to be folded. Thus we still reference correct
table entries.

It is only gup_fast case that exposes the issue. It hits because
pointers to stack copies are passed to gup_pXd_range iterators, not
pointers to real page tables itself.

As Gerald mentioned, it is very difficult to explain in a clear way.
Hopefully, one could make sense ot of it.

> Jason