Re: [PATCH] filemap: prefault writes starting beyond EOF

[Pedro Falcato]

On Wed, Nov 04, 2026 at 07:10:02AM +0000, Hungyu Lin wrote:
> Since prefaulting moved to the slow write path, a buffered write can reach
> ->write_begin() and ->write_end() before discovering that its source buffer
> is unreadable. Several filesystems can extend i_size in these callbacks
> even when no data was copied. For example, a one-byte pwrite() at offset
> 4096 into an empty file can fail with EFAULT but leave a 4096-byte file.

I've been following this discussion rather passively on the other thread, so
I'll ask my stupid question: Why is this a problem? Yes, it's a bit of
weird behavior, but system calls are generally not expected to behave
super sanely in the case of bad input/weird errors.

> 
> Prefault the source before ->write_begin() when the write position is
> beyond EOF, and return EFAULT if no source bytes can be made readable.
> Overwrites and appends continue to skip this prefault. Keep the existing
> slow-path faulting for forward progress after a failed atomic copy.
> 
> This also leaves intentional zero-length ->write_end() calls used by
> generic_cont_expand_simple() unchanged. As with the previous prefaulting
> behavior, a concurrent userspace unmap can still race with the later copy.

Ok, so it's still racy? What do you do if you can't fault it in at all?
You still get a hole?

> 
> Fixes: 665575cff098 ("filemap: move prefaulting out of hot write path")
> Reported-by: Kiryl Shutsemau <kas@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/at9xXRhD2xZhszEj@thinkstation/
> Suggested-by: Kiryl Shutsemau <kas@xxxxxxxxxx>
> Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/at-XtWBQg3jv3H8Z@thinkstation/
> Cc: stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: Hungyu Lin <dennylin0707@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> 
>  mm/filemap.c | 10 ++++++++++
>  1 file changed, 10 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/mm/filemap.c b/mm/filemap.c
> index b74bc1e5015c6f318333427f223b9f42061a6213..30414d55412b84f11ebe98b8eea607ee8c04eef5 100644
> --- a/mm/filemap.c
> +++ b/mm/filemap.c
> @@ -4389,6 +4389,16 @@ ssize_t generic_perform_write(struct kiocb *iocb, struct iov_iter *i)
>  			break;
>  		}
>  
> +		/*
> +		 * Some filesystems can extend i_size even when nothing was copied.
> +		 * Prefault writes beyond EOF to catch unreadable source buffers.
> +		 */
> +		if (unlikely(pos > i_size_read(mapping->host)) &&
> +		    fault_in_iov_iter_readable(i, bytes) == bytes) {

I say this doesn't matter, and if you pass insane inputs you get
insane outputs. Even more so considering this is racy, e.g races
against munmap(), mremap(), mprotect(), memory poisoning, and other things
like truncated memory mapped files sending out a SIGBUS (or uffd) :)

I don't think it makes to add random prefault loops in hopes this makes
for saner semantics.

-- 
Pedro