Re: [PATCH] mm: reuse the unshared swapcache page in do_wp_page

From: David Hildenbrand
Date: Thu Jan 13 2022 - 11:48:57 EST


On 13.01.22 17:37, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 6:39 AM Matthew Wilcox <willy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> Let's bring Linus in on this, but I think this reintroduces all of the
>> mapcount problems that we've been discussing recently.
>>
>> How about this as an alternative?
>
> No, at that point reuse_swap_page() is the better thing to do.
>
> Don't play games with page_count() (or even worse games with
> swap_count). The page count is only stable if it's 1. Any other value
> means that it can fluctuate due to concurrent lookups, some of which
> can be done locklessly under RCU.

I'm pretty sure the patch as is will reintroduce the CVE. So I think in
addition to the reuse_swap_page() check we need more.

I'm wondering if we can get rid of the mapcount checks in
reuse_swap_page() and instead check for page_count() and swapcount only.

We don't care if it's unstable in a sense than it will be bigger than
what we expect. In that case we COW as we would already do.

Thoughts?

--
Thanks,

David / dhildenb