RE: [PATCH v1] mm/gup: fix FOLL_FORCE COW security issue and remove FOLL_COW

David Laight
2022-08-09T21:17:01Z

From: Jason Gunthorpe
> Sent: 09 August 2022 20:08
>
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 11:59:45AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> > But as a very good approximation, the rule is "absolutely no new
> > BUG_ON() calls _ever_". Because I really cannot see a single case
> > where "proper error handling and WARN_ON_ONCE()" isn't the right
> > thing.
>
> Parallel to this discussion I've had ones where people more or less
> say
>
> Since BUG_ON crashes the machine and Linus says that crashing the
> machine is bad, WARN_ON will also crash the machine if you set the
> panic_on_warn parameter, so it is also bad, thus we shouldn't use
> anything.
>
> I've generally maintained that people who set the panic_on_warn *want*
> these crashes, because that is the entire point of it. So we should
> use WARN_ON with an error recovery for "can't happen" assertions like
> these. I think it is what you are saying here.

They don't necessarily want the crashes, it is more the people who
built the distribution think they want the crashes.

I have had issues with a customer system (with our drivers) randomly
locking up.
Someone had decided that 'PANIC_ON_OOPS' was a good idea but hadn't
enabled anything to actually take the dump.

So instead of a diagnosable problem (and a 'doh' moment) you
get several weeks of head scratching and a very annoyed user.

David

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