Hey Sean, On Tue, Jul 20, 2021 at 08:33:46PM +0000, Sean Christopherson wrote: > On Tue, Jul 20, 2021, Alexandru Elisei wrote: > > I just can't figure out why having the mmap lock is not needed to walk the > > userspace page tables. Any hints? Or am I not seeing where it's taken? > > Disclaimer: I'm not super familiar with arm64's page tables, but the relevant KVM > functionality is common across x86 and arm64. No need for the disclaimer, there are so many moving parts here that I don't think it's possible to be familiar with them all! Thanks for taking the time to write it up so clearly. > KVM arm64 (and x86) unconditionally registers a mmu_notifier for the mm_struct > associated with the VM, and disallows calling ioctls from a different process, > i.e. walking the page tables during KVM_RUN is guaranteed to use the mm for which > KVM registered the mmu_notifier. As part of registration, the mmu_notifier > does mmgrab() and doesn't do mmdrop() until it's unregistered. That ensures the > mm_struct itself is live. > > For the page tables liveliness, KVM implements mmu_notifier_ops.release, which is > invoked at the beginning of exit_mmap(), before the page tables are freed. In > its implementation, KVM takes mmu_lock and zaps all its shadow page tables, a.k.a. > the stage2 tables in KVM arm64. The flow in question, get_user_mapping_size(), > also runs under mmu_lock, and so effectively blocks exit_mmap() and thus is > guaranteed to run with live userspace tables. Unless I missed a case, exit_mmap() only runs when mm_struct::mm_users drops to zero, right? The vCPU tasks should hold references to that afaict, so I don't think it should be possible for exit_mmap() to run while there are vCPUs running with the corresponding page-table. > Looking at the arm64 code, one thing I'm not clear on is whether arm64 correctly > handles the case where exit_mmap() wins the race. The invalidate_range hooks will > still be called, so userspace page tables aren't a problem, but > kvm_arch_flush_shadow_all() -> kvm_free_stage2_pgd() nullifies mmu->pgt without > any additional notifications that I see. x86 deals with this by ensuring its > top-level TDP entry (stage2 equivalent) is valid while the page fault handler is > running. But the fact that x86 handles this race has me worried. What am I missing? I agree that, if the race can occur, we don't appear to handle it in the arm64 backend. Cheers, Will
