Re: set_page_dirty vs truncate

[John Hubbard <jhubbard@nvidia.com>]

On 12/18/20 10:50 PM, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
...
>>> Hmmm ... looks like __set_page_dirty_nobuffers() has a similar problem:
>>>
>>> {
>>>           lock_page_memcg(page);
>>>           if (!TestSetPageDirty(page)) {
>>>                   struct address_space *mapping = page_mapping(page);
>>>                   unsigned long flags;
>>>
>>>                   if (!mapping) {
>>>                           unlock_page_memcg(page);
>>>                           return 1;
>>>                   }
>>>
>>>                   xa_lock_irqsave(&mapping->i_pages, flags);
>>>                   BUG_ON(page_mapping(page) != mapping);
>>>
>>> sure, we check that the page wasn't truncated between set_page_dirty()
>>> and the call to TestSetPageDirty(), but we can truncate dirty pages
>>> with no problem.  So between the call to TestSetPageDirty() and
>>> the call to xa_lock_irqsave(), the page can be truncated, and the
>>> BUG_ON should fire.
>>>
>>> I haven't been able to find any examples of this, but maybe it's just a very
>>> narrow race.  Does anyone recognise this signature?  Adding the filesystems
>>> which use __set_page_dirty_nobuffers() directly without extra locking.
>>
>>
>> That sounds like the same *kind* of failure that Jan Kara and I were
>> seeing on live systems[1], that led eventually to the gup-to-pup
>> conversion exercise.
>>
>> That crash happened due to calling set_page_dirty() on pages that had no
>> buffers on them [2]. And that sounds like *exactly* the same thing as
>> calling __set_page_dirty_nobuffers() without extra locking. So I'd
>> expect that it's Just Wrong To Do, for the same reasons as Jan spells
>> out very clearly in [1].
> 
> Interesting.  It's a bit different, *but* Jan's race might be what's
> causing this symptom.  The reason is that the backtrace contains
> set_page_dirty_lock() which holds the page lock.  So there can't be
> a truncation race because truncate holds the page lock when calling
> ->invalidatepage.
> 
> That said, the syzbot reproducer doesn't have any O_DIRECT in it
> either.  So maybe this is some other race?

Jan's race can be also be reproduced *without* O_DIRECT. I first saw
it via a program that just did these steps on a normal ext4 filesystem:

a) pin ext4 file-backed pages, via get_user_pages(). Actually the way
it got here was due to using what *looked* like anonymous RAM to the
program, but was really file-backed RAM, because the admin had it
set up to mount ext4 on /tmp, instead of using tmpfs, to "save RAM",
but I digress. :)

b) wait a while, optionally do some DMA on the pages from a GPU, drink
coffee...

c) call set_pages_dirty()

d) unpin the pages

e) BUG_ON() in page_buffers().


thanks,
-- 
John Hubbard
NVIDIA