Re: [PATCH v3] mm/kasan: dump alloc and free stack for page allocator

From: Vlastimil Babka
Date: Thu Sep 12 2019 - 10:31:46 EST


On 9/12/19 4:08 PM, Walter Wu wrote:

extern void __reset_page_owner(struct page *page, unsigned int order);
diff --git a/lib/Kconfig.kasan b/lib/Kconfig.kasan
index 6c9682ce0254..dc560c7562e8 100644
--- a/lib/Kconfig.kasan
+++ b/lib/Kconfig.kasan
@@ -41,6 +41,8 @@ config KASAN_GENERIC
select SLUB_DEBUG if SLUB
select CONSTRUCTORS
select STACKDEPOT
+ select PAGE_OWNER
+ select PAGE_OWNER_FREE_STACK
help
Enables generic KASAN mode.
Supported in both GCC and Clang. With GCC it requires version 4.9.2
@@ -63,6 +65,8 @@ config KASAN_SW_TAGS
select SLUB_DEBUG if SLUB
select CONSTRUCTORS
select STACKDEPOT
+ select PAGE_OWNER
+ select PAGE_OWNER_FREE_STACK
help

What is the difference between PAGE_OWNER+PAGE_OWNER_FREE_STACK and
DEBUG_PAGEALLOC?

Same memory usage, but debug_pagealloc means also extra checks and restricting memory access to freed pages to catch UAF.

If you directly enable PAGE_OWNER+PAGE_OWNER_FREE_STACK
PAGE_OWNER_FREE_STACK,don't you think low-memory device to want to use
KASAN?

OK, so it should be optional? But I think it's enough to distinguish no PAGE_OWNER at all, and PAGE_OWNER+PAGE_OWNER_FREE_STACK together - I don't see much point in PAGE_OWNER only for this kind of debugging.

So how about this? KASAN wouldn't select PAGE_OWNER* but it would be recommended in the help+docs. When PAGE_OWNER and KASAN are selected by user, PAGE_OWNER_FREE_STACK gets also selected, and both will be also runtime enabled without explicit page_owner=on.
I mostly want to avoid another boot-time option for enabling PAGE_OWNER_FREE_STACK.
Would that be enough flexibility for low-memory devices vs full-fledged debugging?