Re: [PATCH -tip 4/4] Atomic text_poke() with fixmap take2

[Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>]

* Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@redhat.com> wrote:

> @@ -523,14 +526,17 @@ void *__kprobes text_poke(void *addr, co
>  		pages[1] = virt_to_page(addr + PAGE_SIZE);
>  	}
>  	BUG_ON(!pages[0]);
> -	if (!pages[1])
> -		nr_pages = 1;
> -	vaddr = vmap(pages, nr_pages, VM_MAP, PAGE_KERNEL);
> -	BUG_ON(!vaddr);
> -	local_irq_disable();
> +	local_irq_save(flags);
> +	set_fixmap(FIX_TEXT_POKE0, page_to_phys(pages[0]));
> +	if (pages[1])
> +		set_fixmap(FIX_TEXT_POKE1, page_to_phys(pages[1]));
> +	vaddr = (char *)fix_to_virt(FIX_TEXT_POKE0);
>  	memcpy(&vaddr[(unsigned long)addr & ~PAGE_MASK], opcode, len);
> -	local_irq_enable();
> -	vunmap(vaddr);
> +	clear_fixmap(FIX_TEXT_POKE0);
> +	if (pages[1])
> +		clear_fixmap(FIX_TEXT_POKE1);
> +	local_flush_tlb();
> +	local_irq_restore(flags);
>  	sync_core();

I'm not sure at all about this widening of the irq-atomic 
section and the idea of allowing non-locked access on single-CPU 
situations - we dont really want to micro-optimize any of this 
on such a level, holding the text lock is a robust rule all code 
should be listening to. (Creating locking assymetry always 
inserts a certain amount of fragility - adding to an already 
fragile concept here.)

And note that there's no reason why text_poke could not be used 
in stop_machine_run() - the stop_machine_run() handler must not 
take the text_lock of course - but outside code calling 
stop_machine_run() can do it and can hence serialize properly.

Note that even if we did this then your v2 patch is not fully 
correct: you need to move the sync_core() at the end of the 
sequence inside the critical section too. (right now this is 
mostly harmless because the INVLPG inside the clear_fixmap() 
happens to be serializing so it has an implicit sync_core() 
property - but nevertheless we better do this straight away to 
not cause problems later down the line.)

	Ingo