Re: [PATCH 06/19] mm/pagewalk: Check pfnmap early for folio_walk_start()

David Hildenbrand
2024-08-16T17:56:37Z

On 16.08.24 16:21, Peter Xu wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 16, 2024 at 11:30:31AM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 14.08.24 15:05, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
>>> On Fri, Aug 09, 2024 at 07:25:36PM +0200, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> That is in general not what we want, and we still have some places that
>>>>>> wrongly hard-code that behavior.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In a MAP_PRIVATE mapping you might have anon pages that we can happily walk.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> vm_normal_page() / vm_normal_page_pmd() [and as commented as a TODO,
>>>>>> vm_normal_page_pud()] should be able to identify PFN maps and reject them,
>>>>>> no?
>>>>>
>>>>> Yep, I think we can also rely on special bit.
>>>
>>> It is more than just relying on the special bit..
>>>
>>> VM_PFNMAP/VM_MIXEDMAP should really only be used inside
>>> vm_normal_page() because thay are, effectively, support for a limited
>>> emulation of the special bit on arches that don't have them. There are
>>> a bunch of weird rules that are used to try and make that work
>>> properly that have to be followed.
>>>
>>> On arches with the sepcial bit they should possibly never be checked
>>> since the special bit does everything you need.
>>>
>>> Arguably any place reading those flags out side of vm_normal_page/etc
>>> is suspect.
>>
>> IIUC, your opinion matches mine: VM_PFNMAP/VM_MIXEDMAP and pte_special()/...
>> usage should be limited to vm_normal_page/vm_normal_page_pmd/ ... of course,
>> GUP-fast is special (one of the reason for "pte_special()" and friends after
>> all).
>
> The issue is at least GUP currently doesn't work with pfnmaps, while
> there're potentially users who wants to be able to work on both page +
> !page use cases. Besides access_process_vm(), KVM also uses similar thing,
> and maybe more; these all seem to be valid use case of reference the vma
> flags for PFNMAP and such, so they can identify "it's pfnmap" or more
> generic issues like "permission check error on pgtable".

What at least VFIO does is first try GUP, and if that fails, try
follow_fault_pfn()->follow_pte(). There is a VM_PFNMAP check in there, yes.

Ideally, follow_pte() would never return refcounted/normal pages, then
the PFNMAP check might only be a performance improvement (maybe).

>
> The whole private mapping thing definitely made it complicated.

Yes, and follow_pte() for now could even return ordinary anon pages. I
spotted that when I was working on that VM_PAT stuff, but I was to
unsure what to do (see below that KVM with MAP_PRIVATE /dev/mem might
just work, no idea if there are use cases?).

Fortunately, vfio calls is_invalid_reserved_pfn() and refuses anything
that has a struct page.

I think KVM does something nasty: if it something with a "struct page",
and it's not PageReserved, it would take a reference (if I get
kvm_pfn_to_refcounted_page()) independent if it's a "normal" or "not
normal" page -- it essentially ignores the vm_normal_page() information
in the page tables ...

So anon pages in pivate mappings from follow_pte() might currently work
with KVM ... because of the way KVM uses follow_pte().

I did not play with it, so I'm not sure if I am missing some detail.

--
Cheers,

David / dhildenb