Re: [PATCH 2/3] kcov: prefault the kcov_area

[Mark Rutland]

On Tue, May 08, 2018 at 03:51:58PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> On Fri,  4 May 2018 14:55:34 +0100 Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On many architectures the vmalloc area is lazily faulted in upon first
> > access. This is problematic for KCOV, as __sanitizer_cov_trace_pc
> > accesses the (vmalloc'd) kcov_area, and fault handling code may be
> > instrumented. If an access to kcov_area faults, this will result in
> > mutual recursion through the fault handling code and
> > __sanitizer_cov_trace_pc(), eventually leading to stack corruption
> > and/or overflow.
> > 
> > We can avoid this by faulting in the kcov_area before
> > __sanitizer_cov_trace_pc() is permitted to access it. Once it has been
> > faulted in, it will remain present in the process page tables, and will
> > not fault again.
> > 
> > ...
> >
> > --- a/kernel/kcov.c
> > +++ b/kernel/kcov.c
> > @@ -324,6 +324,17 @@ static int kcov_close(struct inode *inode, struct file *filep)
> >  	return 0;
> >  }
> >  
> > +static void kcov_fault_in_area(struct kcov *kcov)
> 
> It would be nice to have a comment here explaining why the function
> exists.
> 
> umm, this?
> 
> --- a/kernel/kcov.c~kcov-prefault-the-kcov_area-fix-fix
> +++ a/kernel/kcov.c
> @@ -324,6 +324,10 @@ static int kcov_close(struct inode *inod
>  	return 0;
>  }
>  
> +/*
> + * fault in a lazily-faulted vmalloc area, to avoid recursion issues if the
> + * vmalloc fault handler itself is instrumented.
> + */

Sounds good to me. Perhaps we want a little more detail, e.g.

/*
 * Fault in a lazily-faulted vmalloc area before it can be used by
 * __santizer_cov_trace_pc(), to avoid recursion issues if any code on
 * the vmalloc fault handling path is instrumented.
 */

>  static void kcov_fault_in_area(struct kcov *kcov)

I also think it might make sense to rename this to kcov_prefault_area(),
so that this doesn't sound like a fault handler, but that's not a big
deal.

Thanks for handling this!

Mark.