Re: [V2 PATCH 1/2] aio: clean up aio_migratepage() and related code much

From: Benjamin LaHaise
Date: Mon Mar 24 2014 - 09:21:19 EST


On Mon, Mar 24, 2014 at 06:59:30PM +0800, Gu Zheng wrote:
> As the page migration framework holds lock_page() to protect the pages
> (both old and new) while migrating, so while the page migrating, both
> of old page and new page are locked. And the aio context teardown
> routine will call *truncate*(in put_aio_ring_file()) to truncate
> pagecache which needs to acquire page_lock() for each page one by one.
> So there is a native mutual exclusion between *migrate page* v.s. truncate().
>
> If put_aio_ring_file() is called at first of the context teardown flow
> (aio_free_ring). Then, page migration and ctx freeing will have mutual
> execution guarded by lock_page() v.s. truncate(). Once a page is removed
> from radix-tree, it will not be migrated. On the other hand, the context
> can not be freed while the page migraiton are ongoing.

Sorry, but your change to remove the taking of ->private_lock in
put_aio_ring_file() is not safe. If a malicious user reinstantiates
any pages in the ring buffer's mmaping, there is nothing protecting
the system against incoherent accesses of ->ring_pages. One possible
way of making this occur would be to use mremap() to expand the size
of the mapping or move it to a different location in the user process'
address space. Yes, it's a tiny race, but it's possible. There is
absolutely no reason to remove this locking -- ring teardown is
hardly a performance sensitive code path. I'm going to stick with my
approach instead.

-ben
--
"Thought is the essence of where you are now."
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