On Tue, Nov 05, 2019 at 10:29:03AM +0000, Will Deacon wrote: > On Mon, Nov 04, 2019 at 05:16:42PM -0800, John Stultz wrote: > > On Tue, Oct 29, 2019 at 8:31 AM Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx> wrote: > > > > > > Shared and writable mappings (__S.1.) should be clean (!dirty) initially > > > and made dirty on a subsequent write either through the hardware DBM > > > (dirty bit management) mechanism or through a write page fault. A clean > > > pte for the arm64 kernel is one that has PTE_RDONLY set and PTE_DIRTY > > > clear. > > > > > > The PAGE_SHARED{,_EXEC} attributes have PTE_WRITE set (PTE_DBM) and > > > PTE_DIRTY clear. Prior to commit 73e86cb03cf2 ("arm64: Move PTE_RDONLY > > > bit handling out of set_pte_at()"), it was the responsibility of > > > set_pte_at() to set the PTE_RDONLY bit and mark the pte clean if the > > > software PTE_DIRTY bit was not set. However, the above commit removed > > > the pte_sw_dirty() check and the subsequent setting of PTE_RDONLY in > > > set_pte_at() while leaving the PAGE_SHARED{,_EXEC} definitions > > > unchanged. The result is that shared+writable mappings are now dirty by > > > default > > > > > > Fix the above by explicitly setting PTE_RDONLY in PAGE_SHARED{,_EXEC}. > > > In addition, remove the superfluous PTE_DIRTY bit from the kernel PROT_* > > > attributes. > > > > > > Fixes: 73e86cb03cf2 ("arm64: Move PTE_RDONLY bit handling out of set_pte_at()") > > > Cc: <stable@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> # 4.14.x- > > > Cc: Will Deacon <will@xxxxxxxxxx> > > > Signed-off-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx> [...] > As an experiment, can you try reverting just the part of the patch that > removes PTE_DIRTY from the PROT_* definitions? (see below) Another thing worth trying is reverting commit 747a70e60b72 ("arm64: Fix copy-on-write referencing in HugeTLB") when this patch is applied. That commit is not just about hugetlb but changes pte_same() to ignore PTE_RDONLY on the assumption that this is set by set_pte_at(). We subsequently changed set_pte_at() to drop PTE_RDONLY. -- Catalin