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Our goal is to move towards enabling vmalloc-huge by default on arm64 so
as to reduce TLB pressure. Therefore, we need a way to analyze the portion
of block mappings in vmalloc space we can get on a production system; this
can be done through ptdump, but currently we disable vmalloc-huge if
CONFIG_PTDUMP_DEBUGFS is on. The reason is that lazy freeing of kernel
pagetables via vmap_try_huge_pxd() may race with ptdump, so ptdump
may dereference a bogus address.
To solve this, we need to synchronize ptdump_walk() and ptdump_check_wx()
with pud_free_pmd_page() and pmd_free_pte_page().
Since this race is very unlikely to happen in practice, we do not want to
penalize the vmalloc pagetable tearing path by taking the init_mm
mmap_lock. Therefore, we use static keys. ptdump_walk() and
ptdump_check_wx() are the pagetable walkers; they will enable the static
key - upon observing that, the vmalloc pagetable tearing path will get
patched in with an mmap_read_lock/unlock sequence. A combination of the
patched-in mmap_read_lock/unlock, the acquire semantics of
static_branch_inc(), and the barriers in __flush_tlb_kernel_pgtable()
ensures that ptdump will never get a hold on the address of a freed PMD
or PTE table.
We can verify the correctness of the algorithm via the following litmus
test (thanks to James Houghton and Will Deacon):
AArch64 ptdump
Variant=Ifetch
{
uint64_t pud=0xa110c;
uint64_t pmd;
0:X0=label:"P1:L0"; 0:X1=instr:"NOP"; 0:X2=lock; 0:X3=pud; 0:X4=pmd;
1:X1=0xdead; 1:X2=lock; 1:X3=pud; 1:X4=pmd;
}
P0 | P1 ;
(* static_key_enable *) | (* pud_free_pmd_page *) ;
STR W1, [X0] | LDR X9, [X3] ;
DC CVAU,X0 | STR XZR, [X3] ;
DSB ISH | DSB ISH ;
IC IVAU,X0 | ISB ;
DSB ISH | ;
ISB | (* static key *) ;
| L0: ;
(* mmap_lock *) | B out1 ;
Lwlock: | ;
MOV W7, #1 | (* mmap_lock *) ;
SWPA W7, W8, [X2] | Lrlock: ;
| MOV W7, #1 ;
| SWPA W7, W8, [X2] ;
(* walk pgtable *) | ;
LDR X9, [X3] | (* mmap_unlock *) ;
CBZ X9, out0 | STLR WZR, [X2] ;
EOR X10, X9, X9 | ;
LDR X11, [X4, X10] | out1: ;
| EOR X10, X9, X9 ;
out0: | STR X1, [X4, X10] ;
exists (0:X8=0 /\ 1:X8=0 /\ (* Lock acquisitions succeed *)
0:X9=0xa110c /\ (* P0 sees the valid PUD ...*)
0:X11=0xdead) (* ... but the freed PMD *)
For an approximate written proof of why this algorithm works, please read
the code comment in [1], which is now removed for the sake of simplicity.
mm-selftests pass. No issues were observed while parallelly running
test_vmalloc.sh (which stresses the vmalloc subsystem),
and cat /sys/kernel/debug/{kernel_page_tables, check_wx_pages} in a loop.
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250723161827.15802-1-dev.jain@arm.com/ [1]
Reviewed-by: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Dev Jain <dev.jain@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the reStructuredText markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.