Re: [PATCH 1/1] mm/thp: fix MTE tag mismatch when replacing zero-filled subpages

[David Hildenbrand]

On 23.09.25 18:14, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 12:52:06PM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> > I just realised that on arm64 with MTE we won't get any merging with the
> > zero page even if the user page isn't mapped with PROT_MTE. In
> > cpu_enable_mte() we zero the tags in the zero page and set
> > PG_mte_tagged. The reason is that we want to use the zero page with
> > PROT_MTE mappings (until tag setting causes CoW). Hmm, the arm64
> > memcmp_pages() messed up KSM merging with the zero page even before this
> > patch.
> [...]
> > diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c b/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c
> > index e5e773844889..72a1dfc54659 100644
> > --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c
> > +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c
> > @@ -73,6 +73,8 @@ int memcmp_pages(struct page *page1, struct page *page2)
> >   {
> >   	char *addr1, *addr2;
> >   	int ret;
> > +	bool page1_tagged = page_mte_tagged(page1) && !is_zero_page(page1);
> > +	bool page2_tagged = page_mte_tagged(page2) && !is_zero_page(page2);
> >   
> >   	addr1 = page_address(page1);
> >   	addr2 = page_address(page2);
> > @@ -83,11 +85,10 @@ int memcmp_pages(struct page *page1, struct page *page2)
> >   
> >   	/*
> >   	 * If the page content is identical but at least one of the pages is
> > -	 * tagged, return non-zero to avoid KSM merging. If only one of the
> > -	 * pages is tagged, __set_ptes() may zero or change the tags of the
> > -	 * other page via mte_sync_tags().
> > +	 * tagged, return non-zero to avoid KSM merging. Ignore the zero page
> > +	 * since it is always tagged with the tags cleared.
> >   	 */
> > -	if (page_mte_tagged(page1) || page_mte_tagged(page2))
> > +	if (page1_tagged || page2_tagged)
> >   		return addr1 != addr2;
> >   
> >   	return ret;
>
> Unrelated to this discussion, I got an internal report that Linux hangs
> during boot with CONFIG_DEFERRED_STRUCT_PAGE_INIT because
> try_page_mte_tagging() locks up on uninitialised page flags.
>
> Since we (always?) map the zero page as pte_special(), set_pte_at()

Yes. (if pte_special is implemented by the arch of course)

> won't check if the tags have to be initialised, so we can skip the
> PG_mte_tagged altogether. We actually had this code for some time until
> we introduced the pte_special() check in set_pte_at().
>
> So alternative patch that also fixes the deferred struct page init (on
> the assumptions that the zero page is always mapped as pte_special():

LGTM!

--
Cheers

David / dhildenb