Re: [PATCH 1/5] mm: Introduce mm_struct.has_pinned

[Jan Kara]

On Thu 24-09-20 11:02:37, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 24, 2020 at 09:44:09AM +0200, Jan Kara wrote:
> > > After the page is pinned it is prevented from being freed and
> > > recycled. After GUP has the pin it must check that the PTE still
> > > points at the same page, otherwise it might have pinned a page that is
> > > alreay free'd - and that would be a use-after-free issue.
> > 
> > I don't think a page use-after-free is really the reason - we add page
> > reference through page_ref_add_unless(page, x, 0) - i.e., it will fail for
> > already freed page. 
> 
> I mean, the page could have been freed and already reallocated with a
> positive refcount, so the add_unless check isn't protective.
>
> The add_unless prevents the page from being freed. The 2nd pte read
> ensures it wasn't already freed/reassigned before the pin.

Ah, right!

> If something drives the page refcount to zero then it is already
> synchronized with GUP fast because of the atomic add_unless, no need
> to re-check the pte for that case?? But I don't know what the DAX case
> is you mentioned.

DAX needs to make sure no new references (including GUP-fast) can be created
for a page before truncating page from a file and freeing it.

								Honza
-- 
Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxxx>
SUSE Labs, CR