Re: [PATCH 1/5] mm: Introduce mm_struct.has_pinned

Jason Gunthorpe
2020-09-24T14:02:42Z

On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 09:44:09AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> > After the page is pinned it is prevented from being freed and
> > recycled. After GUP has the pin it must check that the PTE still
> > points at the same page, otherwise it might have pinned a page that is
> > alreay free'd - and that would be a use-after-free issue.
>
> I don't think a page use-after-free is really the reason - we add page
> reference through page_ref_add_unless(page, x, 0) - i.e., it will fail for
> already freed page.

I mean, the page could have been freed and already reallocated with a
positive refcount, so the add_unless check isn't protective.

The add_unless prevents the page from being freed. The 2nd pte read
ensures it wasn't already freed/reassigned before the pin.

If something drives the page refcount to zero then it is already
synchronized with GUP fast because of the atomic add_unless, no need
to re-check the pte for that case?? But I don't know what the DAX case
is you mentioned.

Jason