Re: [PATCH] arm64/pageattr: Propagate return value from __change_memory_common

From: Dev Jain

Date: Tue Nov 04 2025 - 08:25:02 EST



On 04/11/25 6:26 pm, Will Deacon wrote:
On Tue, Nov 04, 2025 at 09:06:12AM +0530, Dev Jain wrote:
On 04/11/25 12:15 am, Yang Shi wrote:
On 11/3/25 7:16 AM, Will Deacon wrote:
On Mon, Nov 03, 2025 at 11:43:06AM +0530, Dev Jain wrote:
Post a166563e7ec3 ("arm64: mm: support large block mapping when
rodata=full"),
__change_memory_common has a real chance of failing due to split
failure.
Before that commit, this line was introduced in c55191e96caa,
still having
a chance of failing if it needs to allocate pagetable memory in
apply_to_page_range, although that has never been observed to be true.
In general, we should always propagate the return value to the caller.

Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Fixes: c55191e96caa ("arm64: mm: apply r/o permissions of VM
areas to its linear alias as well")
Signed-off-by: Dev Jain <dev.jain@xxxxxxx>
---
Based on Linux 6.18-rc4.

  arch/arm64/mm/pageattr.c | 5 ++++-
  1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/arch/arm64/mm/pageattr.c b/arch/arm64/mm/pageattr.c
index 5135f2d66958..b4ea86cd3a71 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/mm/pageattr.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/mm/pageattr.c
@@ -148,6 +148,7 @@ static int change_memory_common(unsigned
long addr, int numpages,
      unsigned long size = PAGE_SIZE * numpages;
      unsigned long end = start + size;
      struct vm_struct *area;
+    int ret;
      int i;
        if (!PAGE_ALIGNED(addr)) {
@@ -185,8 +186,10 @@ static int change_memory_common(unsigned
long addr, int numpages,
      if (rodata_full && (pgprot_val(set_mask) == PTE_RDONLY ||
                  pgprot_val(clear_mask) == PTE_RDONLY)) {
          for (i = 0; i < area->nr_pages; i++) {
- __change_memory_common((u64)page_address(area->pages[i]),
+            ret =
__change_memory_common((u64)page_address(area->pages[i]),
                             PAGE_SIZE, set_mask, clear_mask);
+            if (ret)
+                return ret;
Hmm, this means we can return failure half-way through the operation. Is
that something callers are expecting to handle? If so, how can they tell
how far we got?
IIUC the callers don't have to know whether it is half-way or not
because the callers will change the permission back (e.g. to RW) for the
whole range when freeing memory.
Yes, it is the caller's responsibility to set VM_FLUSH_RESET_PERMS flag.
Upon vfree(), it will change the direct map permissions back to RW.
Ok, but vfree() ends up using update_range_prot() to do that and if we
need to worry about that failing (as per your commit message), then
we're in trouble because the calls to set_area_direct_map() are unchecked.

In other words, this patch is either not necessary or it is incomplete.

I think we had concluded in the discussion of the linear map series that those
calls will always succeed - I'll refresh my memory on that and get back to you later!


Will