[PATCH v2 03/26] userfaultfd: don't retake mmap_sem to emulate NOPAGE

Peter Xu
2019-02-12T02:57:22Z

The idea comes from the upstream discussion between Linus and Andrea:

https://lkml.org/lkml/2017/10/30/560

A summary to the issue: there was a special path in handle_userfault()
in the past that we'll return a VM_FAULT_NOPAGE when we detected
non-fatal signals when waiting for userfault handling. We did that by
reacquiring the mmap_sem before returning. However that brings a risk
in that the vmas might have changed when we retake the mmap_sem and
even we could be holding an invalid vma structure.

This patch removes the risk path in handle_userfault() then we will be
sure that the callers of handle_mm_fault() will know that the VMAs
might have changed. Meanwhile with previous patch we don't lose
responsiveness as well since the core mm code now can handle the
nonfatal userspace signals quickly even if we return VM_FAULT_RETRY.

Suggested-by: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Suggested-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
---
fs/userfaultfd.c | 24 ------------------------
1 file changed, 24 deletions(-)

diff --git a/fs/userfaultfd.c b/fs/userfaultfd.c
index 89800fc7dc9d..b397bc3b954d 100644
--- a/fs/userfaultfd.c
+++ b/fs/userfaultfd.c
@@ -514,30 +514,6 @@ vm_fault_t handle_userfault(struct vm_fault *vmf, unsigned long reason)

__set_current_state(TASK_RUNNING);

- if (return_to_userland) {
- if (signal_pending(current) &&
- !fatal_signal_pending(current)) {
- /*
- * If we got a SIGSTOP or SIGCONT and this is
- * a normal userland page fault, just let
- * userland return so the signal will be
- * handled and gdb debugging works. The page
- * fault code immediately after we return from
- * this function is going to release the
- * mmap_sem and it's not depending on it
- * (unlike gup would if we were not to return
- * VM_FAULT_RETRY).
- *
- * If a fatal signal is pending we still take
- * the streamlined VM_FAULT_RETRY failure path
- * and there's no need to retake the mmap_sem
- * in such case.
- */
- down_read(&mm->mmap_sem);
- ret = VM_FAULT_NOPAGE;
- }
- }
-
/*
* Here we race with the list_del; list_add in
* userfaultfd_ctx_read(), however because we don't ever run
--
2.17.1