Re: [PATCH] mm/filemap: fix NULL pointer dereference in do_read_cache_folio()

Darrick J. Wong
2025-11-19T06:29:43Z

On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 11:38:36AM -0800, Andrii Nakryiko wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 8:12 AM Darrick J. Wong <djwong@kernel.org> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 03:37:09PM +0000, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > > On Tue, Nov 18, 2025 at 05:03:24AM -0800, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Nov 17, 2025 at 10:45:31AM -0800, Andrii Nakryiko wrote:
> > > > > As I replied on another email, ideally we'd have some low-level file
> > > > > reading interface where we wouldn't have to know about secretmem, or
> > > > > XFS+DAX, or whatever other unusual combination of conditions where
> > > > > exposed internal APIs like filemap_get_folio() + read_cache_folio()
> > > > > can crash.
> > > >
> > > > The problem is that you did something totally insane and it kinda works
> > > > most of the time.
> > >
> > > ... on 64-bit systems. The HIGHMEM handling is screwed up too.
> > >
> > > > But bpf or any other file system consumer has
> > > > absolutely not business poking into the page cache to start with.
> > >
> > > Agreed.
> > >
> > > > And I'm really pissed off that you wrote and merged this code without
> > > > ever bothering to talk to a FS or MM person who have immediately told
> > > > you so. Let's just rip out this buildid junk for now and restart
> > > > because the problem isn't actually that easy.
> > >
> > > Oh, they did talk to fs & mm people originally and were told NO, so they
> > > sneaked it in through the BPF tree.
> > >
> > > https://lore.kernel.org/all/20230316170149.4106586-1-jolsa@kernel.org/
> > >
> > > > > The only real limitation is that we'd like to be able to control
> > > > > whether we are ok sleeping or not, as this code can be called from
> > > > > pretty much anywhere BPF might run, which includes NMI context.
> > > > >
> > > > > Would this kiocb_read() approach work under those circumstances?
> > > >
> > > > No. IOCB_NOWAIT is just a hint to avoid blocking function calls.
> > > > It is not guarantee and a guarantee is basically impossible.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure I'd go that far -- I think we're pretty good about not
> > > sleeping when IOCB_NOWAIT is specified and any remaining places can
> > > be fixed up.
> > >
> > > But I am inclined to rip out the buildid code, just because the
> > > authors have been so rude.
> >
> > Which fstest actually checks the functionality of the buildid code?
> > I don't find any, which means none of the fs people have a good signal
> > for breakage in this, um, novel file I/O path.
>
> We have plenty of build ID tests in BPF selftest that validate this
> functionality:
>
> - tools/testing/selftests/bpf/prog_tests/stacktrace_build_id.c
> - tools/testing/selftests/bpf/prog_tests/stacktrace_build_id_nmi.c
> - tools/testing/selftests/bpf/prog_tests/build_id.c
>
> This functionality is exposed to BPF (and PROCMAP_QUERY, which has its
> own mm selftests), so that's where we test this. So we'll know at the
> very least when trees merge that something is broken.

Only if you're testing the buildid functionality with all known file I/O
paths implemented by all filesystems. Or you could add a new testcase
to fstests and we'd do all that *for* you.

--D

> >
> > --D
>