Re: [PATCH] x86/mm/pat: fix effective RW computation in lookup_address_in_pgd_attr()

[David Laight <david.laight.linux@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 16 Jul 2026 12:18:48 +0300
Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org> wrote:

> On Thu, Jul 16, 2026 at 10:37:00AM +0200, Jürgen Groß wrote:
> > On 16.07.26 10:10, Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) wrote:  
> > > lookup_address_in_pgd_attr() accumulates the effective NX and RW bits of
> > > the walked page table levels so that verify_rwx() can detect mappings that
> > > are both writable and executable.
> > > 
> > > The RW bits are folded into a bool with
> > > 
> > > 	*rw &= pXd_flags(*pXd) & _PAGE_RW;
> > > 
> > > but _PAGE_RW is bit 1 while *rw only ever holds 0 or 1, so the AND is
> > > always 0.  *rw becomes false at the first level walked, regardless of the
> > > actual permissions, and verify_rwx() treats every mapping as non-writable
> > > and never reports a W^X violation.
> > > 
> > > Accumulate NX and RW in unsigned long locals in their native bit positions
> > > and store the result into the bool outputs once.
> > > 
> > > Fixes: ceb647b4b529 ("x86/pat: Introduce lookup_address_in_pgd_attr()")
> > > Assisted-by: Copilot:claude-opus-4.8
> > > Signed-off-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>  
> > 
> > Thanks for catching this.
> > 
> > Reviewed-by: Juergen Gross <jgross@suse.com>
> > 
> > Just one remark: instead of using additional local variables the fix could
> > just look like:
> > 
> >     *rw |= !!(pXd_flags(*pXd) & _PAGE_RW);
> > 
> > I don't really care how the issue is fixed, but this would result in less
> > code.  
> 
> But it will be slower :) 
> 
> I instrumented cpa-test and I see ~2% improvement with additional local
> variables.

Does it improve further if you defer the '& _PAGE_NX' to the final assigment?

	David

>  
> > Juergen  
> 
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