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Some of users of Polars (a data analytics library) have lost production
data from this bug. They seem to have just the right combination of
huge pages, MADV_FREE and heavy reclaim pressure.
pmd_modify() masks the old value with (_HPAGE_CHG_MASK & ~_PAGE_DIRTY),
silently discarding the hardware dirty bit. The subsequent
pmd_mksaveddirty() call is supposed to transfer _PAGE_DIRTY into
_PAGE_SAVED_DIRTY when write-protecting, but the dirty bit was already
stripped from the value, so there is nothing left to transfer.
Contrast with pte_modify(), which keeps _PAGE_DIRTY_BITS in its mask,
and pud_modify(), which keeps _HPAGE_CHG_MASK untouched: pmd_modify()
is the odd one out. Any pmd_modify() on a writable, dirty PMD loses
the dirty state.
One visible consequence is data loss with MADV_FREE on PMD-mapped THP:
memset(buf, 0x5A, size); // PMD-mapped THP, PMD dirty
madvise(buf, size, MADV_FREE); // PMD cleaned but left writable,
// folio marked lazyfree
memset(buf, 0x5A, size); // hardware sets _PAGE_DIRTY again
mprotect(buf, size, PROT_READ); // pmd_modify() drops the dirty bit
mprotect(buf, size, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE);
// ... memory pressure ...
Reclaim (e.g. under memcg pressure) then finds the lazyfree folio with
no dirty bit set anywhere and frees it in
__discard_anon_folio_pmd_locked(), even though the data was rewritten
after MADV_FREE; subsequent reads fault in fresh zero pages. NUMA
hinting alone can trigger the same loss, as do_huge_pmd_numa_page()
restores the PMD through pmd_modify() as well.
PMD-mapped file THPs are affected too: mprotect()/NUMA hinting dropping
the dirty bit means rewritten data is never written back.
Fix it by keeping _PAGE_DIRTY in the preserved mask, exactly like
pte_modify() and pud_modify() do. The existing
pmd_mksaveddirty()/pmd_clear_saveddirty() pair then performs the
hardware-dirty <-> saved-dirty transition based on the write bit,
preserving the shadow-stack encoding rules.
Fixes:
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|---|---|---|
| arch | ||
| block | ||
| certs | ||
| crypto | ||
| Documentation | ||
| drivers | ||
| fs | ||
| include | ||
| init | ||
| io_uring | ||
| ipc | ||
| kernel | ||
| lib | ||
| LICENSES | ||
| mm | ||
| net | ||
| rust | ||
| samples | ||
| scripts | ||
| security | ||
| sound | ||
| tools | ||
| usr | ||
| virt | ||
| .clang-format | ||
| .clippy.toml | ||
| .cocciconfig | ||
| .editorconfig | ||
| .get_maintainer.ignore | ||
| .gitattributes | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .mailmap | ||
| .pylintrc | ||
| .rustfmt.toml | ||
| COPYING | ||
| CREDITS | ||
| Kbuild | ||
| Kconfig | ||
| MAINTAINERS | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README | ||
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