Re: [PATCH 1/5] mm: Introduce mm_struct.has_pinned

From: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
To: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>, Linux-MM <linux-mm@kvack.org>,
	kernel list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>, Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>,
	Kirill Tkhai <ktkhai@virtuozzo.com>,
	Kirill Shutemov <kirill@shutemov.name>,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>, Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>,
	Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>,
	John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com>,
	Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>,
	Leon Romanovsky <leonro@nvidia.com>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/5] mm: Introduce mm_struct.has_pinned
Date: Tue, 22 Sep 2020 10:28:02 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200922142802.GC19098@xz-x1> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20200922115436.GG8409@ziepe.ca>

On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 08:54:36AM -0300, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 12:47:11AM +0200, Jann Horn wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 12:30 AM Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 11:43:38PM +0200, Jann Horn wrote:
> > > > On Mon, Sep 21, 2020 at 11:17 PM Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com> wrote:
> > > > > (Commit message collected from Jason Gunthorpe)
> > > > >
> > > > > Reduce the chance of false positive from page_maybe_dma_pinned() by keeping
> > > > > track if the mm_struct has ever been used with pin_user_pages(). mm_structs
> > > > > that have never been passed to pin_user_pages() cannot have a positive
> > > > > page_maybe_dma_pinned() by definition.
> > > >
> > > > There are some caveats here, right? E.g. this isn't necessarily true
> > > > for pagecache pages, I think?
> > >
> > > Sorry I didn't follow here.  Could you help explain with some details?
> > 
> > The commit message says "mm_structs that have never been passed to
> > pin_user_pages() cannot have a positive page_maybe_dma_pinned() by
> > definition"; but that is not true for pages which may also be mapped
> > in a second mm and may have been passed to pin_user_pages() through
> > that second mm (meaning they must be writable over there and not
> > shared with us via CoW).
> 
> The message does need a few more words to explain this trick can only
> be used with COW'able pages.
>  
> > Process A:
> > 
> > fd_a = open("/foo/bar", O_RDWR);
> > mapping_a = mmap(NULL, 0x1000, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd_a, 0);
> > pin_user_pages(mapping_a, 1, ...);
> > 
> > Process B:
> > 
> > fd_b = open("/foo/bar", O_RDONLY);
> > mapping_b = mmap(NULL, 0x1000, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE, fd_b, 0);
> > *(volatile char *)mapping_b;
> > 
> > At this point, process B has never called pin_user_pages(), but
> > page_maybe_dma_pinned() on the page at mapping_b would return true.
> 
> My expectation is the pin_user_pages() should have already broken the
> COW for the MAP_PRIVATE, so process B should not have a
> page_maybe_dma_pinned()

When process B maps with PROT_READ only (w/o PROT_WRITE) then it seems the same
page will be mapped.

I think I get the point from Jann now.  Maybe it's easier I just remove the
whole "mm_structs that have never been passed to pin_user_pages() cannot have a
positive page_maybe_dma_pinned() by definition" sentence if that's misleading,
because the rest seem to be clear enough on what this new field is used for.

Thanks,

-- 
Peter Xu