Re: [PATCH] mm/gup: disallow GUP writing to file-backed mappings by default

[Lorenzo Stoakes]

On Sun, Apr 23, 2023 at 09:32:01PM +0200, Simon Horman wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 22, 2023 at 02:37:05PM +0100, Lorenzo Stoakes wrote:
> > It isn't safe to write to file-backed mappings as GUP does not ensure that
> > the semantics associated with such a write are performed correctly, for
> > instance filesystems which rely upon write-notify will not be correctly
> > notified.
> >
> > There are exceptions to this - shmem and hugetlb mappings are (in effect)
> > anonymous mappings by other names so we do permit this operation in these
> > cases.
> >
> > In addition, if no pinning takes place (neither FOLL_GET nor FOLL_PIN is
> > specified and neither flags gets implicitly set) then no writing can occur
> > so we do not perform the check in this instance.
> >
> > This is an important exception, as populate_vma_page_range() invokes
> > __get_user_pages() in this way (and thus so does __mm_populate(), used by
> > MAP_POPULATE mmap() and mlock() invocations).
> >
> > There are GUP users within the kernel that do nevertheless rely upon this
> > behaviour, so we introduce the FOLL_ALLOW_BROKEN_FILE_MAPPING flag to
> > explicitly permit this kind of GUP access.
> >
> > This is required in order to not break userspace in instances where the
> > uAPI might permit file-mapped addresses - a number of RDMA users require
> > this for instance, as do the process_vm_[read/write]v() system calls,
> > /proc/$pid/mem, ptrace and SDT uprobes. Each of these callers have been
> > updated to use this flag.
> >
> > Making this change is an important step towards a more reliable GUP, and
> > explicitly indicates which callers might encouter issues moving forward.
>
> nit: s/encouter/encounter/
>

Ack, I always seem to leave at least one or two easter egg spelling
mistakes in :)

Will fix up on next respin (in unlikely event of no further review,
hopefully Andrew would pick up!)