Re: [PATCH] mm/userfaultfd: fix memory corruption due to writeprotect

[Andrea Arcangeli]

On Tue, Jan 05, 2021 at 04:37:27PM +0100, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> (your other email clarified this point; the COW needs to copy while
> holding the PTL and we need TLBI under PTL if we're to change this)

The COW doesn't need to hold the PT lock, the TLBI broadcast doesn't
need to be delivered under PT lock either.

Simply there need to be a TLBI broadcast before the copy. The patch I
sent here https://lkml.kernel.org/r/X+QLr1WmGXMs33Ld@xxxxxxxxxx that
needs to be cleaned up with some abstraction and better commentary
also misses a smp_mb() in the case flush_tlb_page is not called, but
that's a small detail.

> And I'm thinking the speculative page fault series steps right into all
> this, it fundamentally avoids mmap_sem and entirely relies on the PTL.

I thought about that but that only applies to some kind of "anon" page
fault.

Here the problem isn't just the page fault, the problem is not to
regress clear_refs to block on page fault I/O, and all
MAP_PRIVATE/MAP_SHARED filebacked faults bitting the disk to read
/usr/ will still prevent clear_refs from running (and the other way
around) if it has to take the mmap_sem for writing.

I don't look at the speculative page fault for a while but last I
checked there was nothing there that can tame the above major
regression from CPU speed to disk I/O speed that would be inflicted on
both clear_refs on huge mm and on uffd-wp.

Thanks,
Andrea