The patch titled Subject: mm: do not allow MADV_PAGEOUT for CoW pages has been removed from the -mm tree. Its filename was mm-do-not-allow-madv_pageout-for-cow-pages.patch This patch was dropped because it was merged into mainline or a subsystem tree ------------------------------------------------------ From: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> Subject: mm: do not allow MADV_PAGEOUT for CoW pages Jann has brought up a very interesting point [1]. While shared pages are excluded from MADV_PAGEOUT normally, CoW pages can be easily reclaimed that way. This can lead to all sorts of hard to debug problems. E.g. performance problems outlined by Daniel [2]. There are runtime environments where there is a substantial memory shared among security domains via CoW memory and a easy to reclaim way of that memory, which MADV_{COLD,PAGEOUT} offers, can lead to either performance degradation in for the parent process which might be more privileged or even open side channel attacks. The feasibility of the latter is not really clear to me TBH but there is no real reason for exposure at this stage. It seems there is no real use case to depend on reclaiming CoW memory via madvise at this stage so it is much easier to simply disallow it and this is what this patch does. Put it simply MADV_{PAGEOUT,COLD} can operate only on the exclusively owned memory which is a straightforward semantic. [1] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/CAG48ez0G3JkMq61gUmyQAaCq=_TwHbi1XKzWRooxZkv08PQKuw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx [2] http://lkml.kernel.org/r/CAKOZueua_v8jHCpmEtTB6f3i9e2YnmX4mqdYVWhV4E=Z-n+zRQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20200312082248.GS23944@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fixes: 9c276cc65a58 ("mm: introduce MADV_COLD") Signed-off-by: Michal Hocko <mhocko@xxxxxxxx> Reported-by: Jann Horn <jannh@xxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx> Cc: Minchan Kim <minchan@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Daniel Colascione <dancol@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: "Joel Fernandes (Google)" <joel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/madvise.c | 12 +++++++++--- 1 file changed, 9 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) --- a/mm/madvise.c~mm-do-not-allow-madv_pageout-for-cow-pages +++ a/mm/madvise.c @@ -335,12 +335,14 @@ static int madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_r } page = pmd_page(orig_pmd); + + /* Do not interfere with other mappings of this page */ + if (page_mapcount(page) != 1) + goto huge_unlock; + if (next - addr != HPAGE_PMD_SIZE) { int err; - if (page_mapcount(page) != 1) - goto huge_unlock; - get_page(page); spin_unlock(ptl); lock_page(page); @@ -426,6 +428,10 @@ regular_page: continue; } + /* Do not interfere with other mappings of this page */ + if (page_mapcount(page) != 1) + continue; + VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(PageTransCompound(page), page); if (pte_young(ptent)) { _ Patches currently in -mm which might be from mhocko@xxxxxxxx are selftests-vm-drop-dependencies-on-page-flags-from-mlock2-tests.patch