Re: [PATCH v2] mm/gup: honour FOLL_PIN in NOMMU __get_user_pages_locked()

Andrew Morton
2026-04-24T13:38:18Z

On Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:28:04 +0200 Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> The !CONFIG_MMU implementation of __get_user_pages_locked() takes a bare
> get_page() reference for each page regardless of foll_flags:
> if (pages[i])
> get_page(pages[i]);
>
> This is reached from pin_user_pages*() with FOLL_PIN set.
> unpin_user_page() is shared between MMU and NOMMU configurations and
> unconditionally calls gup_put_folio(..., FOLL_PIN), which subtracts
> GUP_PIN_COUNTING_BIAS (1024) from the folio refcount.
>
> This means that pin adds 1, and then unpin will subtract 1024.
>
> If a user maps a page (refcount 1), registers it 1023 times as an
> io_uring fixed buffer (1023 pin_user_pages calls -> refcount 1024), then
> unregisters: the first unpin_user_page subtracts 1024, refcount hits 0,
> the page is freed and returned to the buddy allocator. The remaining
> 1022 unpins write into whatever was reallocated, and the user's VMA
> still maps the freed page (NOMMU has no MMU to invalidate it).
> Reallocating the page for an io_uring pbuf_ring then lets userspace
> corrupt the new owner's data through the stale mapping.
>
> Use try_grab_folio() which adds GUP_PIN_COUNTING_BIAS for FOLL_PIN and 1
> for FOLL_GET, mirroring the CONFIG_MMU path so pin and unpin are
> symmetric.

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