Re: [v2 PATCH] mm: introduce arg_lock to protect arg_start|end and env_start|end in mm_struct

From: Mateusz Guzik
Date: Tue Mar 27 2018 - 10:31:34 EST


On Tue, Mar 27, 2018 at 08:29:39AM +0200, Michal Hocko wrote:
> On Tue 27-03-18 02:20:39, Yang Shi wrote:
> [...]
> The patch looks reasonable to me. Maybe it would be better to be more
> explicit about the purpose of the patch. As others noticed, this alone
> wouldn't solve the mmap_sem contention issues. I _think_ that if you
> were more explicit about the mmap_sem abuse it would trigger less
> questions.
>

>From what I gather even with other fixes the kernel will still end up
grabbing the semaphore. In this case I don't see what's the upside of
adding the spinlock for args. The downside is growth of mm_struct.

i.e. the code can be refactored to just hold the lock and relock only if
necessary (unable to copy to user without faulting)

--
Mateusz Guzik