Re: BUG: Bad page state in process dirtyc0w_child

Gerald Schaefer
2020-09-23T22:02:39Z

On Wed, 23 Sep 2020 14:50:36 -0700
Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Sep 23, 2020 at 2:33 PM Gerald Schaefer
> <gerald.schaefer@linux.ibm.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks, very nice walk-through, need some time to digest this. The TLB
> > aspect is interesting, and we do have our own __tlb_remove_page_size(),
> > which directly calls free_page_and_swap_cache() instead of the generic
> > batched approach.
>
> So I don't think it's the free_page_and_swap_cache() itself that is the problem.
>
> As mentioned, the actual pages themselves should be handled by the
> reference counting being atomic.
>
> The interrupt disable is really about just the page *tables* being
> free'd - not the final page level.
>
> So the issue is that at least on x86-64, we have the serialization
> that we will only free the page tables after a cross-CPU IPI has
> flushed the TLB.
>
> I think s390 just RCU-free's the page tables instead, which should fix it.
>
> So I think this is special, and s390 is very different from x86, but I
> don't think it's the problem.
>
> In fact, I think you pinpointed the real issue:
>
> > Meanwhile, out of curiosity, while I still fail to comprehend commit
> > 09854ba94c6a ("mm: do_wp_page() simplification") in its entirety, there
> > is one detail that I find most confusing: the unlock_page() has moved
> > behind the wp_page_reuse(), while it was the other way round before.
>
> You know what? That was just a mistake, and I think you may actually
> have hit the real cause of the problem.
>
> It means that we keep the page locked until after we do the
> pte_unmap_unlock(), so now we have no guarantees that we hold the page
> referecne.
>
> And then we unlock it - while somebody else might be freeing it.
>
> So somebody is freeing a locked page just as we're unlocking it, and
> that matches the problem you see exactly: the debug thing will hit
> because the last free happened while locked, and then by the time the
> printout happens it has become unlocked so it doesn't show any more.
>
> Duh.
>
> Would you mind testing just moving the unlock_page() back to before
> the wp_page_reuse()?

Sure, I'll give it a try running over the night again.