On 09/15/2019 08:05 AM, Balbir Singh wrote:
>
>
> On 3/9/19 7:45 pm, Anshuman Khandual wrote:
>> The arm64 page table dump code can race with concurrent modification of the
>> kernel page tables. When a leaf entries are modified concurrently, the dump
>> code may log stale or inconsistent information for a VA range, but this is
>> otherwise not harmful.
>>
>> When intermediate levels of table are freed, the dump code will continue to
>> use memory which has been freed and potentially reallocated for another
>> purpose. In such cases, the dump code may dereference bogus addresses,
>> leading to a number of potential problems.
>>
>> Intermediate levels of table may by freed during memory hot-remove,
>> which will be enabled by a subsequent patch. To avoid racing with
>> this, take the memory hotplug lock when walking the kernel page table.
>>
>> Acked-by: David Hildenbrand <david@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> Acked-by: Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@xxxxxxx>
>> Signed-off-by: Anshuman Khandual <anshuman.khandual@xxxxxxx>
>> ---
>> arch/arm64/mm/ptdump_debugfs.c | 4 ++++
>> 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+)
>>
>> diff --git a/arch/arm64/mm/ptdump_debugfs.c b/arch/arm64/mm/ptdump_debugfs.c
>> index 064163f25592..b5eebc8c4924 100644
>> --- a/arch/arm64/mm/ptdump_debugfs.c
>> +++ b/arch/arm64/mm/ptdump_debugfs.c
>> @@ -1,5 +1,6 @@
>> // SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
>> #include <linux/debugfs.h>
>> +#include <linux/memory_hotplug.h>
>> #include <linux/seq_file.h>
>>
>> #include <asm/ptdump.h>
>> @@ -7,7 +8,10 @@
>> static int ptdump_show(struct seq_file *m, void *v)
>> {
>> struct ptdump_info *info = m->private;
>> +
>> + get_online_mems();
>> ptdump_walk_pgd(m, info);
>> + put_online_mems();
>
> Looks sane, BTW, checking other arches they might have the same race.
The problem can be present on other architectures which can dump kernel page
table during memory hot-remove operation where it actually frees up page table
pages. If there is no freeing involved the race condition here could cause
inconsistent or garbage information capture for a given VA range. Same is true
even for concurrent vmalloc() operations as well. But removal of page tables
pages can make it worse. Freeing page table pages during hot-remove is a platform
decision, so would be adding these locks while walking kernel page table during
ptdump.
> Is there anything special about the arch?
AFAICS, no.
>
> Acked-by: Balbir Singh <bsingharora@xxxxxxxxx>
>
>
