Re: [PATCH] mm/ksm: fix userfaultfd protection during merge and unmerge

From: David Hildenbrand (Arm)

Date: Tue Oct 27 2026 - 08:27:10 EST


On 10/26/26 14:00, Lance Yang wrote:
> KSM loses userfaultfd protection when replace_page() builds a new PTE
> from vma->vm_page_prot. Dropping its uffd bit lets a subsequent write go
> through ordinary COW instead of userfaultfd write protection handling. For
> RWP, a merged page also becomes readable without faulting.
>
> Keeping the uffd bit and restoring PAGE_NONE fixes merging, but we also
> have to handle unmerging. An existing KSM page can be protected with RWP
> before MADV_UNMERGEABLE, so unmerging already needs fixing independently
> of preserving RWP during merging.
>
> Unsharing replaces a shared page with a private one and should leave
> userfaultfd protection in place, as do_wp_page() already does for write
> protection. Currently, an unshare fault reaches do_uffd_rwp() before it
> can proceed to do_wp_page().
>
> - With synchronous RWP, handle_userfault() returns VM_FAULT_SIGBUS.
> break_ksm() then reports success with a KSM page still merged.
>
> - With asynchronous RWP, protection is cleared before unsharing.
>
> Preserve the uffd bit when merging, and restore PAGE_NONE for RWP. Let
> FAULT_FLAG_UNSHARE skip RWP fault handling and keep PAGE_NONE on each
> private copy as well. Unsharing can then complete with RWP still armed
> for a subsequent access.
>
> Fixes: 63b2d4174c4a ("userfaultfd: wp: add the writeprotect API to userfaultfd ioctl")
> Fixes: 2d427bb01639 ("mm/userfaultfd: add RWP fault delivery and expose UFFDIO_REGISTER_MODE_RWP")
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20261019010934.697895-1-samarth.colleges@xxxxxxxxx/
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20261020055518.36087-1-lance.yang@xxxxxxxxx/
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Co-developed-by: Samarth Narang <samarth.colleges@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Samarth Narang <samarth.colleges@xxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Lance Yang <lance.yang@xxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@xxxxxxxxxx>

--
Cheers,

David