Re: [BUGFIX][PATCH -tip] x86: fix text_poke to handle highmem pages

From: Mathieu Desnoyers
Date: Mon Apr 06 2009 - 13:59:41 EST


* Masami Hiramatsu (mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> > * Masami Hiramatsu (mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx) wrote:
> >> Fix a bug in text_poke to handle highmem pages, because module
> >> text pages are possible to be highmem pages on x86-32.
> >> In that case, since fixmap can't handle those pages, text_poke
> >> uses kmap_atomic.
> >>
> >
> > Hrm, can you remind me what would be the downside of using kmap_atomic
> > in every scenarios (highmem and non-highmem) then ?
>
> kmap_atomic can handle only highmem pages. If you passes lowmem pages,
> it returns just original vaddr of it. (because kmap is only for
> highmem support)
>

OK, and if we are doing a second kmap_atomic() of a module text page
which is already mapped, does the second kmap_atomic return the vaddr of
the page originally mapped or is it creating a second mapping ?

Because if we ever decide to enforce read-only page mapping for module
text pages, touching highmem pages too, we will run into real trouble if
those happen to be the same page.

Mathieu

> >
> > I would try to avoid "special cases" as much as possible, because they
> > just make problems harder to reproduce.
>
> Actually, this bug is a special case because it happens only on PAE kernel.
>
> >
> > The idea would be to either add fixmap highmem support, or to simply use
> > kmap_atomic() for all cases until we add fixmap highmem support.
> >
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> --
> Masami Hiramatsu
>
> Software Engineer
> Hitachi Computer Products (America) Inc.
> Software Solutions Division
>
> e-mail: mhiramat@xxxxxxxxxx
>

--
Mathieu Desnoyers
OpenPGP key fingerprint: 8CD5 52C3 8E3C 4140 715F BA06 3F25 A8FE 3BAE 9A68
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/