Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH V2 0/5] vhost: accelerate metadata access through vmap()

From: Andrea Arcangeli <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2019 18:50:32 -0400

On Tue, Mar 12, 2019 at 03:02:54PM -0700, James Bottomley wrote:
> I'm sure there must be workarounds elsewhere in the other arch code
> otherwise things like this, which appear all over drivers/, wouldn't
> work:
> 
> drivers/scsi/isci/request.c:1430
> 
> 	kaddr = kmap_atomic(page);
> 	memcpy(kaddr + sg->offset, src_addr, copy_len);
> 	kunmap_atomic(kaddr);
> 

Are you sure "page" is an userland page with an alias address?

	sg->page_link = (unsigned long)virt_to_page(addr);

page_link seems to point to kernel memory.

I found an apparent solution like parisc on arm 32bit:

void __kunmap_atomic(void *kvaddr)
{
	unsigned long vaddr = (unsigned long) kvaddr & PAGE_MASK;
	int idx, type;

	if (kvaddr >= (void *)FIXADDR_START) {
		type = kmap_atomic_idx();
		idx = FIX_KMAP_BEGIN + type + KM_TYPE_NR * smp_processor_id();

		if (cache_is_vivt())
			__cpuc_flush_dcache_area((void *)vaddr, PAGE_SIZE);

However on arm 64bit kunmap_atomic is not implemented at all and other
32bit implementations don't do it, for example sparc seems to do the
cache flush too if the kernel is built with CONFIG_DEBUG_HIGHMEM
(which makes the flushing conditional to the debug option).

The kunmap_atomic where fixmap is used, is flushing the tlb lazily so
even on 32bit you can't even be sure if there was a tlb flush for each
single page you unmapped, so it's hard to see how the above can work
safe, is "page" would have been an userland page mapped with aliased
CPU cache.

> the sequence dirties the kernel virtual address but doesn't flush
> before doing kunmap.  There are hundreds of other examples which is why
> I think adding flush_kernel_dcache_page() is an already lost cause.

In lots of cases kmap is needed to just modify kernel memory not to
modify userland memory (where get/put_user is more commonly used
instead..), there's no cache aliasing in such case.

> Actually copy_user_page() is unused in the main kernel.  The big
> problem is copy_user_highpage() but that's mostly highly optimised by
> the VIPT architectures (in other words you can fiddle with kmap without
> impacting it).

copy_user_page is not unused, it's called precisely by
copy_user_highpage, which is why the cache flushes are done inside
copy_user_page.

static inline void copy_user_highpage(struct page *to, struct page *from,
	unsigned long vaddr, struct vm_area_struct *vma)
{
	char *vfrom, *vto;

	vfrom = kmap_atomic(from);
	vto = kmap_atomic(to);
	copy_user_page(vto, vfrom, vaddr, to);
	kunmap_atomic(vto);
	kunmap_atomic(vfrom);
}