Re: [PATCH] x86/mm/vmfault: Make vmalloc_fault() handle large pages

[Henning Schild]

On Tue, 9 Feb 2016 10:10:03 +0100
Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> * Toshi Kani <toshi.kani@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Since 4.1, ioremap() supports large page (pud/pmd) mappings in
> > x86_64 and PAE. vmalloc_fault() however assumes that the vmalloc
> > range is limited to pte mappings.
> > 
> > pgd_ctor() sets the kernel's pgd entries to user's during fork(),
> > which makes user processes share the same page tables for the
> > kernel ranges.  When a call to ioremap() is made at run-time that
> > leads to allocate a new 2nd level table (pud in 64-bit and pmd in
> > PAE), user process needs to re-sync with the updated kernel pgd
> > entry with vmalloc_fault().
> > 
> > Following changes are made to vmalloc_fault().  
> 
> So what were the effects of this shortcoming? Were large page
> ioremap()s unusable? Was this harmless because no driver used this
> facility?

Drivers do use huge ioremap()s. Now if a pre-existing mm is used to
access the device memory a #PF and the call to vmalloc_fault would
eventually make the kernel treat device memory as if it was a
pagetable.
The results are illegal reads/writes on iomem and dereferencing iomem
content like it was a pointer to a lower level pagetable.
- #PF if you are lucky
- funny modification of arbitrary memory possible
- can be abused with uio or regular userland ?? 

Henning
  
> If so then the changelog needs to spell this out clearly ...



> Thanks,
> 
> 	Ingo