Re: UBSAN: Undefined behaviour in mm/page_alloc.c

[Mel Gorman]

On Fri, Nov 09, 2018 at 09:43:53AM +0100, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Thu 08-11-18 23:09:23, Kyungtae Kim wrote:
> > We report a bug in v4.19-rc2 (4.20-rc1 as well, I guess):
> > 
> > kernel config: https://kt0755.github.io/etc/config_v2-4.19
> > repro: https://kt0755.github.io/etc/repro.c4074.c
> > 
> > In the middle of page request, this arose because order is too large to handle
> >  (mm/page_alloc.c:3119). It actually comes from that order is
> > controllable by user input
> > via raw_cmd_ioctl without its sanity check, thereby causing memory problem.
> > To stop it, we can use like MAX_ORDER for bounds check before using it.
> 
> Yes, we do only check the max order in the slow path. We have already
> discussed something similar with Konstantin [1][2]. Basically kvmalloc
> for a large size might get to the page allocator with an out of bound
> order and warn during direct reclaim.
> 
> I am wondering whether really want to check for the order in the fast
> path instead. I have hard time to imagine this could cause a measurable
> impact.
> 
> The full patch is below
> 
> [1] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/154109387197.925352.10499549042420271600.stgit@buzz
> [2] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/154106356066.887821.4649178319705436373.stgit@buzz
> 

I'm ok with such changes under the policy "there is no point being fast if
we're broken". It's unfortunate and I know the original microoptimisation
was mine but if the fast-path check ends up being a problem then I/we go
back to finding ways of making the page allocator faster from a fundamental
algorithmic point of view and not a microoptimisation approach. There is
potential fruit there, just none that is low-hanging.

-- 
Mel Gorman
SUSE Labs