On 09.07.24 15:05, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
The vDSO getrandom() implementation works with a buffer allocated with a
new system call that has certain requirements:
- It shouldn't be written to core dumps.
* Easy: VM_DONTDUMP.
- It should be zeroed on fork.
* Easy: VM_WIPEONFORK.
- It shouldn't be written to swap.
* Uh-oh: mlock is rlimited.
* Uh-oh: mlock isn't inherited by forks.
It turns out that the vDSO getrandom() function has three really nice
characteristics that we can exploit to solve this problem:
1) Due to being wiped during fork(), the vDSO code is already robust to
having the contents of the pages it reads zeroed out midway through
the function's execution.
2) In the absolute worst case of whatever contingency we're coding for,
we have the option to fallback to the getrandom() syscall, and
everything is fine.
3) The buffers the function uses are only ever useful for a maximum of
60 seconds -- a sort of cache, rather than a long term allocation.
These characteristics mean that we can introduce VM_DROPPABLE, which
has the following semantics:
a) It never is written out to swap.
b) Under memory pressure, mm can just drop the pages (so that they're
zero when read back again).
c) It is inherited by fork.
d) It doesn't count against the mlock budget, since nothing is locked.
This is fairly simple to implement, with the one snag that we have to
use 64-bit VM_* flags, but this shouldn't be a problem, since the only
consumers will probably be 64-bit anyway.
This way, allocations used by vDSO getrandom() can use:
VM_DROPPABLE | VM_DONTDUMP | VM_WIPEONFORK | VM_NORESERVE
And there will be no problem with using memory when not in use, not
wiping on fork(), coredumps, or writing out to swap.
In order to let vDSO getrandom() use this, expose these via mmap(2) as
MAP_DROPPABLE.
Finally, the provided self test ensures that this is working as desired.
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx>
I'll try to think of some corner cases we might be missing.
As raised, I think we could do better at naming, such as "MAP_FREEABLE"
to match MADV_FREE, MAP_VOLATILE, ... but if nobody else care, I shall
not care :)
--
Cheers,
David / dhildenb
