Re: [PATCH 1/2] mmap locking API: Order lock of nascent mm outside lock of live mm

Michel Lespinasse
2020-10-02T09:18:04Z

On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 6:25 PM Jann Horn <jannh@google.com> wrote:
> Until now, the mmap lock of the nascent mm was ordered inside the mmap lock
> of the old mm (in dup_mmap() and in UML's activate_mm()).
> A following patch will change the exec path to very broadly lock the
> nascent mm, but fine-grained locking should still work at the same time for
> the new mm.
> To do this in a way that lockdep is happy about, let's turn around the lock
> ordering in both places that currently nest the locks.
> Since SINGLE_DEPTH_NESTING is normally used for the inner nesting layer,
> make up our own lock subclass MMAP_LOCK_SUBCLASS_NASCENT and use that
> instead.
>
> The added locking calls in exec_mmap() are temporary; the following patch
> will move the locking out of exec_mmap().

Thanks for doing this.

This is probably a silly question, but I am not sure exactly where we
lock the old MM while bprm is creating the new MM ? I am guessing this
would be only in setup_arg_pages(), copying the args and environment
from the old the the new MM ? If that is correct, then wouldn't it be
sufficient to use mmap_write_lock_nested in setup_arg_pages() ? Or, is
the issue that we'd prefer to have a killable version of it there ?

Also FYI I was going to play with these patches a bit to help answer
these questions on my own, but wasn't able to easily apply them as
they came lightly mangled (whitespace issues) when I saved them.