3.16.57-rc1 review patch. If anyone has any objections, please let me know. ------------------ From: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> commit 69d763fc6d3aee787a3e8c8c35092b4f4960fa5d upstream. Minchan Kim asked the following question -- what locks protects address_space destroying when race happens between inode trauncation and __isolate_lru_page? Jan Kara clarified by describing the race as follows CPU1 CPU2 truncate(inode) __isolate_lru_page() ... truncate_inode_page(mapping, page); delete_from_page_cache(page) spin_lock_irqsave(&mapping->tree_lock, flags); __delete_from_page_cache(page, NULL) page_cache_tree_delete(..) ... mapping = page_mapping(page); page->mapping = NULL; ... spin_unlock_irqrestore(&mapping->tree_lock, flags); page_cache_free_page(mapping, page) put_page(page) if (put_page_testzero(page)) -> false - inode now has no pages and can be freed including embedded address_space if (mapping && !mapping->a_ops->migratepage) - we've dereferenced mapping which is potentially already free. The race is theoretically possible but unlikely. Before the delete_from_page_cache, truncate_cleanup_page is called so the page is likely to be !PageDirty or PageWriteback which gets skipped by the only caller that checks the mappping in __isolate_lru_page. Even if the race occurs, a substantial amount of work has to happen during a tiny window with no preemption but it could potentially be done using a virtual machine to artifically slow one CPU or halt it during the critical window. This patch should eliminate the race with truncation by try-locking the page before derefencing mapping and aborting if the lock was not acquired. There was a suggestion from Huang Ying to use RCU as a side-effect to prevent mapping being freed. However, I do not like the solution as it's an unconventional means of preserving a mapping and it's not a context where rcu_read_lock is obviously protecting rcu data. Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180104102512.2qos3h5vqzeisrek@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fixes: c82449352854 ("mm: compaction: make isolate_lru_page() filter-aware again") Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@xxxxxxxxx> Cc: Jan Kara <jack@xxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> [bwh: Backported to 3.16: adjust context] Signed-off-by: Ben Hutchings <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- mm/vmscan.c | 14 ++++++++++++-- 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) --- a/mm/vmscan.c +++ b/mm/vmscan.c @@ -1206,6 +1206,7 @@ int __isolate_lru_page(struct page *page if (PageDirty(page)) { struct address_space *mapping; + bool migrate_dirty; /* ISOLATE_CLEAN means only clean pages */ if (mode & ISOLATE_CLEAN) @@ -1214,10 +1215,19 @@ int __isolate_lru_page(struct page *page /* * Only pages without mappings or that have a * ->migratepage callback are possible to migrate - * without blocking + * without blocking. However, we can be racing with + * truncation so it's necessary to lock the page + * to stabilise the mapping as truncation holds + * the page lock until after the page is removed + * from the page cache. */ + if (!trylock_page(page)) + return ret; + mapping = page_mapping(page); - if (mapping && !mapping->a_ops->migratepage) + migrate_dirty = mapping && mapping->a_ops->migratepage; + unlock_page(page); + if (!migrate_dirty) return ret; } }