Re: [PATCH v2] mm: userfaultfd: avoid passing an invalid range to vma_merge()

Lorenzo Stoakes
2023-05-15T23:07:38Z

On Mon, May 15, 2023 at 11:04:27PM +0100, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
[snip]
> > Could you explain a bit why we don't need to merge in this case?
> >
> > I'm considering, for example, when we have:
> >
> > vma1(range 0-9, with uffd), vma2(range 10-19, no uffd)
> >
> > Then someone unregisters uffd on range (5-9), iiuc it should become:
> >
> > vma1(range 0-4, with uffd), vma2(range 5-19, no uffd)
> >
> > But if no merge here it's:
> >
> > vma1(range 0-4, with uffd), vma3(range 5-9, no uffd), vma2(range 10-19, no uffd)
> >
> > Maybe I missed something?
> >
>
> There's something really, really wrong with this. It simply isn't valid to
> invoke vma_merge() over an existing VMA that != prev where you're not
> specifying addr = vma->vm_start, end == vma->vm_end.
>
> This seems like you're relying on:-
>
> ***
> CCCCCNNNNN -> CCNNNNNNNN
>
> By specifying parameters that are compatible with N even though you're only
> partially spanning C?
>
> This is crazy, and isn't how this should be used. vma_merge() is not
> supposed to do partial merges. If it works (presumably it does) this is not
> by design unless I've lost my mind and I (and others) have somehow not
> noticed this??
>
> I think you're right that now we'll end up with more fragmentation, but
> what you're suggesting is not how vma_merge() is supposed to work.
>
> As I said above, giving vma_merge() invalid parameters is very dangerous as
> you could end up merging over empty ranges in theory (and could otherwise
> have corruption).
>
> I guess we should probably be passing 0 to the last parameter in
> split_vma() here then to ensure we do a merge pass too. Will experiment
> with this.
>
> I'm confused as to how the remove from case 8 is not proceeding. I'll look
> into this some more...
>
> Happy to be corrected if I'm misconstruing this!
>

OK, so I wrote a small program to do perform exactly this case [0] and it seems
that the outcome is the same before and after this patch - vma_merge() is
clearly rejecting the case 8 merge (phew!) and in both instances you end up with
3 VMAs.

So this patch doesn't change this behaviour and everything is as it was
before. Ideally we'd let it go for another pass, so maybe we should change the
split to add a new VMA _afterwards_. Will experiment with that, separately.

But looks like the patch is good as it is.

(if you notice something wrong with the repro, etc. do let me know!)

[0]: https://gist.github.com/lorenzo-stoakes/a11a10f5f479e7a977fc456331266e0e

[snip]