Re: [PATCH v2 3/3] fork: lock VMAs of the parent process when forking

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Fri Aug 04 2023 - 20:15:04 EST


On Fri, 4 Aug 2023 at 16:25, Mateusz Guzik <mjguzik@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I know of these guys, I think they are excluded as is -- they go
> through access_remote_vm, starting with:
> if (mmap_read_lock_killable(mm))
> return 0;
>
> while dup_mmap already write locks the parent's mm.

Oh, you're only worried about vma_start_write()?

That's a non-issue. It doesn't take the lock normally, since it starts off with

if (__is_vma_write_locked(vma, &mm_lock_seq))
return;

which catches on the lock sequence number already being set.

So no extra locking there.

Well, technically there's extra locking because the code stupidly
doesn't initialize new vma allocations to the right sequence number,
but that was talked about here:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wiCrWAoEesBuoGoqqufvesicbGp3cX0LyKgEvsFaZNpDA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/

and it's a separate issue.

Linus