Re: [PATCH -v4] ext4: don't BUG if kernel subsystems dirty pages without asking ext4 first

[Theodore Ts'o]

[un]pin_user_pages_remote is dirtying pages without properly warning
the file system in advance.  A related race was noted by Jan Kara in
2018[1]; however, more recently instead of it being a very hard-to-hit
race, it could be reliably triggered by process_vm_writev(2) which was
discovered by Syzbot[2].

This is technically a bug in mm/gup.c, but arguably ext4 is fragile in
that if some other kernel subsystem dirty pages without properly
notifying the file system using page_mkwrite(), ext4 will BUG, while
other file systems will not BUG (although data will still be lost).

So instead of crashing with a BUG, issue a warning (since there may be
potential data loss) and just mark the page as clean to avoid
unprivileged denial of service attacks until the problem can be
properly fixed.  More discussion and background can be found in the
thread starting at [2].

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20180103100430.GE4911@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/r/Yg0m6IjcNmfaSokM@xxxxxxxxxx

Reported-by: syzbot+d59332e2db681cf18f0318a06e994ebbb529a8db@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Reported-by: Lee Jones <lee.jones@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@xxxxxxx>
Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxx
---
v4 - only changes to the commit description to eliminate some inaccuracies
     and clarify the text.

 fs/ext4/inode.c | 27 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 26 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/fs/ext4/inode.c b/fs/ext4/inode.c
index 01c9e4f743ba..008fe8750109 100644
--- a/fs/ext4/inode.c
+++ b/fs/ext4/inode.c
@@ -1993,6 +1993,15 @@ static int ext4_writepage(struct page *page,
 	else
 		len = PAGE_SIZE;
 
+	/* Should never happen but for bugs in other kernel subsystems */
+	if (!page_has_buffers(page)) {
+		ext4_warning_inode(inode,
+		   "page %lu does not have buffers attached", page->index);
+		ClearPageDirty(page);
+		unlock_page(page);
+		return 0;
+	}
+
 	page_bufs = page_buffers(page);
 	/*
 	 * We cannot do block allocation or other extent handling in this
@@ -2588,12 +2597,28 @@ static int mpage_prepare_extent_to_map(struct mpage_da_data *mpd)
 			     (mpd->wbc->sync_mode == WB_SYNC_NONE)) ||
 			    unlikely(page->mapping != mapping)) {
 				unlock_page(page);
-				continue;
+				goto out;
 			}
 
 			wait_on_page_writeback(page);
 			BUG_ON(PageWriteback(page));
 
+			/*
+			 * Should never happen but for buggy code in
+			 * other subsystems that call
+			 * set_page_dirty() without properly warning
+			 * the file system first.  See [1] for more
+			 * information.
+			 *
+			 * [1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20180103100430.GE4911@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
+			 */
+			if (!page_has_buffers(page)) {
+				ext4_warning_inode(mpd->inode, "page %lu does not have buffers attached", page->index);
+				ClearPageDirty(page);
+				unlock_page(page);
+				continue;
+			}
+
 			if (mpd->map.m_len == 0)
 				mpd->first_page = page->index;
 			mpd->next_page = page->index + 1;
-- 
2.31.0