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authorLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2010-04-12 15:44:29 -0400
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2010-04-12 20:54:13 -0400
commitea90002b0fa7bdee86ec22eba1d951f30bf043a6 (patch)
tree7620aa0da5b7314769b177dd0934bb87fe7c993b /Documentation/email-clients.txt
parent646d87b481dab4ba8301716600dfd276605b0ab0 (diff)
anonvma: when setting up page->mapping, we need to pick the _oldest_ anonvma
Otherwise we might be mapping in a page in a new mapping, but that page (through the swapcache) would later be mapped into an old mapping too. The page->mapping must be the case that works for everybody, not just the mapping that happened to page it in first. Here's the scenario: - page gets allocated/mapped by process A. Let's call the anon_vma we associate the page with 'A' to keep it easy to track. - Process A forks, creating process B. The anon_vma in B is 'B', and has a chain that looks like 'B' -> 'A'. Everything is fine. - Swapping happens. The page (with mapping pointing to 'A') gets swapped out (perhaps not to disk - it's enough to assume that it's just not mapped any more, and lives entirely in the swap-cache) - Process B pages it in, which goes like this: do_swap_page -> page = lookup_swap_cache(entry); ... set_pte_at(mm, address, page_table, pte); page_add_anon_rmap(page, vma, address); And think about what happens here! In particular, what happens is that this will now be the "first" mapping of that page, so page_add_anon_rmap() used to do if (first) __page_set_anon_rmap(page, vma, address); and notice what anon_vma it will use? It will use the anon_vma for process B! What happens then? Trivial: process 'A' also pages it in (nothing happens, it's not the first mapping), and then process 'B' execve's or exits or unmaps, making anon_vma B go away. End result: process A has a page that points to anon_vma B, but anon_vma B does not exist any more. This can go on forever. Forget about RCU grace periods, forget about locking, forget anything like that. The bug is simply that page->mapping points to an anon_vma that was correct at one point, but was _not_ the one that was shared by all users of that possible mapping. Changing it to always use the deepest anon_vma in the anonvma chain gets us to the safest model. This can be improved in certain cases: if we know the page is private to just this particular mapping (for example, it's a new page, or it is the only swapcache entry), we could pick the top (most specific) anon_vma. But that's a future optimization. Make it _work_ reliably first. Reviewed-by: Rik van Riel <riel@redhat.com> Acked-by: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org> Tested-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de> [ "What do you know, I think you fixed it!" ] Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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