Re: [PATCH] Revert "MIPS: Remove race window in page fault handling"

[Leonid Yegoshin]

(repeat mesg, first one went to wrong place)

Lars,

Do you have a stack trace or so then you found the second VPE between 
set_pte_at and update_mmu_cache?
It would be interesting how it happens - generally, to get a consistent 
SIGILL in applications due to misbehaviour of memory subsystem, the bug 
in FS is not enough.

Hold on - do you use non-DMA file system?
If so, I advice you to try this simple patch:

    Author: Leonid Yegoshin <yegoshin@xxxxxxxx>
    Date:   Tue Apr 2 14:20:37 2013 -0700

    MIPS: (opt) Fix of reading I-pages from non-DMA FS devices for ID 
cache separation

    This optional fix provides a D-cache flush for instruction code 
pages on
    page faults. In case of non-DMA block device a driver doesn't know 
that it
    reads I-page and doesn't flush D-cache generally on systems without
    cache aliasing. And that takes toll during page fault of 
instruction pages.

    It is not a perfect fix, it should be considered as a temporary fix.
    The permanent fix would track page origin in page cache and flushes 
D-cache
    during reception of page from driver only but not at each page fault.
    It is not done yet.

    Change-Id: I43f5943d6ce0509729179615f6b81e77803a34ac
    Author: Leonid Yegoshin <yegoshin@xxxxxxxx>
    Signed-off-by: Leonid Yegoshin <yegoshin@xxxxxxxx>(imported from 
commit 6ebd22eb7a3d9873582ebe990a77094f971652ee)(imported from commit 
0caf3b4a1eebb64572e81e4df6fdb3abf12c70

arch/mips/include/asm/cacheflush.h:

   @@ -61,6 +61,9 @@ static inline void flush_anon_page(struct 
vm_area_struct *vma,
    static inline void flush_icache_page(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
           struct page *page)
    {
   +       if (cpu_has_dc_aliases ||
   +           ((vma->vm_flags & VM_EXEC) && !cpu_has_ic_fills_f_dc))
   +               __flush_dcache_page(page);
    }

    extern void (*flush_icache_range)(unsigned long start, unsigned 
long end);


It fixed crash problems with non-DMA FS in a couple of our customers. 
Without it the non-DMA root FS crashes are catastrophic in aliasing 
systems but it is still a problem for I-cache too but much rare.

Unfortunately, it is also a performance hit, however is less than run a 
page cache flush at each PTE setup. On 12/03/2014 06:03 AM, Lars Persson 
wrote:
> It is the flush_dcache_page() that was called from the file-system
> reading the page contents into memory.
>
> - Lars

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