From: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
To: stable@vger.kernel.org
Cc: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@suse.de>,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
Samarth Narang <samarth.colleges@gmail.com>,
"Gregory Price (Meta)" <gourry@gourry.net>,
Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>, "Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM)" <ljs@kernel.org>,
"David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>,
SJ Park <sj@kernel.org>, "Liam R. Howlett" <liam@infradead.org>,
Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@kernel.org>, Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>,
Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>, Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>,
Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>,
Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
Subject: [PATCH 6.1.y] mm/madvise: atomically clear the young bit on THP MADV_COLD
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2026 18:04:23 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20261110230356.8288-1-sashal@kernel.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20261107055439-failed-6.1-246c8cc33438@kernel.org>
From: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@suse.de>
[ Upstream commit 246c8cc33438a71c28f9b86baa492d9a0a130316 ]
As-is, madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_range() discards the hardware young bit
by invalidating the PMD, doing pmd_mkold() and subsequently writing to the
pmd again. However, it does so in a racy manner, looking at a
possibly-stale snapshot. It's entirely possible that a write elsewhere
set the hardware D bit, which this logic now loses.
Fix it by using pmdp_test_and_clear_young(). This is an atomic
modification of the PMD entry, and thus safe against any possible racing
writes. As a (nice) side-effect, this elides one non-required TLB flush
in pmdp_invalidate().
This bug can interact with the swapping system in complicated ways,
leading to data loss. For instance, if a folio is marked lazyfree, but
was later read from, and then MADV_COLD'd while racing a write to that
same THP, dropping the dirty bit may lead to data loss as
reclaim/MADV_PAGEOUT drops the "clean" anon folio:
T0 T1
================================================================
MADV_FREE(thp) |
folio marked lazyfree |
read(thp) |
PMD marked young by hardware |
| MADV_COLD(thp)
write(thp) | if (pmd_young(pmd)) {
PMD marked dirty by hardware | set(pmdp, pmd_mkold(pmd));
MADV_PAGEOUT/reclaim |
dirty bit may or may not be |
set |
reclaim/pageout may drop |
the folio |
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20261013191719.95502-1-pfalcato@suse.de
Fixes: 9c276cc65a58 ("mm: introduce MADV_COLD")
Signed-off-by: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@suse.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Reported-by: Samarth Narang <samarth.colleges@gmail.com>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20261011132227.413217-1-samarth.colleges@gmail.com/
Reviewed-by: Gregory Price (Meta) <gourry@gourry.net>
Acked-by: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Reviewed-by: Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) <ljs@kernel.org>
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: SJ Park <sj@kernel.org>
Cc: Liam R. Howlett <liam@infradead.org>
Cc: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@kernel.org>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
[ sashal: Retained pmd_young(orig_pmd) without the !pageout guard because the corresponding reclaim optimization is absent. ]
Signed-off-by: Sasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
---
mm/madvise.c | 5 +----
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 4 deletions(-)
diff --git a/mm/madvise.c b/mm/madvise.c
index b271cc1b48edb..5640bacba5384 100644
--- a/mm/madvise.c
+++ b/mm/madvise.c
@@ -379,10 +379,7 @@ static int madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_range(pmd_t *pmd,
}
if (pmd_young(orig_pmd)) {
- pmdp_invalidate(vma, addr, pmd);
- orig_pmd = pmd_mkold(orig_pmd);
-
- set_pmd_at(mm, addr, pmd, orig_pmd);
+ pmdp_test_and_clear_young(vma, addr, pmd);
tlb_remove_pmd_tlb_entry(tlb, pmd, addr);
}
--
2.53.0
prev parent reply other threads:[~2026-11-10 23:04 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 2+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-11-07 10:54 FAILED: patch "[PATCH] mm/madvise: atomically clear the young bit on THP MADV_COLD" failed to apply to 6.1-stable tree Sasha Levin
2026-11-10 23:04 ` Sasha Levin [this message]
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20261110230356.8288-1-sashal@kernel.org \
--to=sashal@kernel.org \
--cc=akpm@linux-foundation.org \
--cc=david@kernel.org \
--cc=gourry@gourry.net \
--cc=hannes@cmpxchg.org \
--cc=jannh@google.com \
--cc=liam@infradead.org \
--cc=ljs@kernel.org \
--cc=mhocko@suse.com \
--cc=minchan@kernel.org \
--cc=pfalcato@suse.de \
--cc=samarth.colleges@gmail.com \
--cc=sj@kernel.org \
--cc=stable@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=vbabka@kernel.org \
--cc=ziy@nvidia.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox