[125/244] mm: sync vmalloc address space page tables in alloc_vm_area()

From: Greg KH
Date: Wed Sep 28 2011 - 19:11:30 EST


3.0-stable review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let us know.

------------------

From: David Vrabel <david.vrabel@xxxxxxxxxx>

commit 461ae488ecb125b140d7ea29ceeedbcce9327003 upstream.

Xen backend drivers (e.g., blkback and netback) would sometimes fail to
map grant pages into the vmalloc address space allocated with
alloc_vm_area(). The GNTTABOP_map_grant_ref would fail because Xen could
not find the page (in the L2 table) containing the PTEs it needed to
update.

(XEN) mm.c:3846:d0 Could not find L1 PTE for address fbb42000

netback and blkback were making the hypercall from a kernel thread where
task->active_mm != &init_mm and alloc_vm_area() was only updating the page
tables for init_mm. The usual method of deferring the update to the page
tables of other processes (i.e., after taking a fault) doesn't work as a
fault cannot occur during the hypercall.

This would work on some systems depending on what else was using vmalloc.

Fix this by reverting ef691947d8a3 ("vmalloc: remove vmalloc_sync_all()
from alloc_vm_area()") and add a comment to explain why it's needed.

Signed-off-by: David Vrabel <david.vrabel@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge <jeremy.fitzhardinge@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Keir Fraser <keir.xen@xxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@xxxxxxx>

---
mm/vmalloc.c | 8 ++++++++
1 file changed, 8 insertions(+)

--- a/mm/vmalloc.c
+++ b/mm/vmalloc.c
@@ -2154,6 +2154,14 @@ struct vm_struct *alloc_vm_area(size_t s
return NULL;
}

+ /*
+ * If the allocated address space is passed to a hypercall
+ * before being used then we cannot rely on a page fault to
+ * trigger an update of the page tables. So sync all the page
+ * tables here.
+ */
+ vmalloc_sync_all();
+
return area;
}
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(alloc_vm_area);


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