public inbox for linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org 
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: nfortino@nvidia•com (Nickolas Fortino)
To: linux-arm-kernel@lists•infradead.org
Subject: preempted dup_mm misses TLB invalidate
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 11:19:23 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <51E43D2B.9090709@nvidia.com> (raw)

I?ve noticed an issue in simulation where the Linux kernel is executing 
a user process when the page tables and TLBs have gotten out of sync. 
The page tables have a page marked as user read only, but the TLB has 
the page marked as user read/write.

I?ve traced the issue back to the handling of copy on write pages 
generated from the ?do_fork?, ?copy_process?, ?dup_mm?, ?dup_mmap? call 
stack. If run without interruption, ?dup_mmap? calls 
?flush_tlb_mm(oldmm)? on completion, avoiding any issues. In this case, 
however, about 4 million instructions after ?dup_mm? is called, 
?copy_pte_range? yields to another thread via __cond_resched. About 20 
million instructions later, a user process with the ASID of the source 
mm is scheduled. This process performs a store to a page modified from 
read/write to read only in the copy on write logic of ?copy_one_pte?. 
Because the TLB was not invalidated, the store hits on a TLB entry with 
read/write permissions and succeeds without a fault.

What invariant in the Linux kernel is supposed to prevent this from 
happening? Note I have not observed user visible corruption, but it 
seems very unlikely a successful store to a page marked as read only in 
the kernel is safe.

For reference, this issue was found with the Linux 3.7 kernel coming 
from the Linaro 12.12 release available at 
http://releases.linaro.org/12.12/android/vexpress

             reply	other threads:[~2013-07-15 18:19 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2013-07-15 18:19 Nickolas Fortino [this message]
2013-07-17 19:27 ` preempted dup_mm misses TLB invalidate Catalin Marinas
2013-07-17 19:52   ` Stephen Warren
2013-07-17 20:01     ` Russell King - ARM Linux
2013-07-17 20:11       ` Stephen Warren
2013-07-17 20:09     ` Nickolas Fortino
2013-07-17 20:34       ` Russell King - ARM Linux
2013-07-17 21:03         ` Nickolas Fortino
2013-07-17 21:21           ` Russell King - ARM Linux
2013-07-18  1:48             ` Nickolas Fortino

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=51E43D2B.9090709@nvidia.com \
    --to=nfortino@nvidia$(echo .)com \
    --cc=linux-arm-kernel@lists$(echo .)infradead.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox