[PATCH RFC 02/10] mm/hugetlb: Comment huge_pte_offset() for its locking requirements

[Peter Xu]

huge_pte_offset() is potentially a pgtable walker, looking up pte_t* for a
hugetlb address.

Normally, it's always safe to walk the pgtable as long as we're with the
mmap lock held for either read or write, because that guarantees the
pgtable pages will always be valid during the process.

But it's not true for hugetlbfs: hugetlbfs has the pmd sharing feature, it
means that even with mmap lock held, the PUD pgtable page can still go away
from under us if pmd unsharing is possible during the walk.

It's not always the case, e.g.:

  (1) If the mapping is private we're not prone to pmd sharing or
      unsharing, so it's okay.

  (2) If we're with the hugetlb vma lock held for either read/write, it's
      okay too because pmd unshare cannot happen at all.

Document all these explicitly for huge_pte_offset(), because it's really
not that obvious.  This also tells all the callers on what it needs to
guarantee huge_pte_offset() thread-safety.

Signed-off-by: Peter Xu <peterx@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
 arch/arm64/mm/hugetlbpage.c | 32 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 32 insertions(+)

diff --git a/arch/arm64/mm/hugetlbpage.c b/arch/arm64/mm/hugetlbpage.c
index 35e9a468d13e..0bf930c75d4b 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/mm/hugetlbpage.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/mm/hugetlbpage.c
@@ -329,6 +329,38 @@ pte_t *huge_pte_alloc(struct mm_struct *mm, struct vm_area_struct *vma,
 	return ptep;
 }
 
+/*
+ * huge_pte_offset(): Walk the hugetlb pgtable until the last level PTE.
+ * Returns the pte_t* if found, or NULL if the address is not mapped.
+ *
+ * NOTE: since this function will walk all the pgtable pages (including not
+ * only high-level pgtable page, but also PUD that can be unshared
+ * concurrently for VM_SHARED), the caller of this function should be
+ * responsible of its thread safety.  One can follow this rule:
+ *
+ *  (1) For private mappings: pmd unsharing is not possible, so it'll
+ *      always be safe if we're with the mmap sem for either read or write.
+ *      This is normally always the case, so IOW we don't need to do
+ *      anything special.
+ *
+ *  (2) For shared mappings: pmd unsharing is possible (so the PUD-ranged
+ *      pgtable page can go away from under us!  It can be done by a pmd
+ *      unshare with a follow up munmap() on the other process), then we
+ *      need either:
+ *
+ *     (2.1) hugetlb vma lock read or write held, to make sure pmd unshare
+ *           won't happen upon the range (it also makes sure the pte_t we
+ *           read is the right and stable one), or,
+ *
+ *     (2.2) RCU read lock, to make sure even pmd unsharing happened, the
+ *           old shared PUD page won't get freed from under us, so even of
+ *           the pteval can be obsolete, at least it's still always safe to
+ *           access the pgtable page (e.g., de-referencing pte_t* would not
+ *           cause use-after-free).
+ *
+ * PS: from the regard of (2.2), it's the same logic of fast-gup being safe
+ * for generic mm, as long as RCU is used to free any pgtable page.
+ */
 pte_t *huge_pte_offset(struct mm_struct *mm,
 		       unsigned long addr, unsigned long sz)
 {
-- 
2.37.3