Re: [RFC PATCH v2] UML: add support for KASAN under x86_64

[Dmitry Vyukov]

On Thu, Feb 13, 2020 at 9:19 AM Johannes Berg <johannes@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2020-02-12 at 16:37 -0800, Patricia Alfonso wrote:
> >
> > > That also means if I have say 512MB memory allocated for UML, KASAN will
> > > use an *additional* 64, unlike on a "real" system, where KASAN will take
> > > about 1/8th of the available physical memory, right?
> > >
> > Currently, the amount of shadow memory allocated is a constant based
> > on the amount of user space address space in x86_64 since this is the
> > host architecture I have focused on.
>
> Right, but again like below - that's just mapped, not actually used. But
> as far as I can tell, once you actually start running and potentially
> use all of your mem=1024 (MB), you'll actually also use another 128MB on
> the KASAN shadow, right?
>
> Unlike, say, a real x86_64 machine where if you just have 1024 MB
> physical memory, the KASAN shadow will have to fit into that as well.

Depends on what you mean by "real" :)
Real user-space ASAN will also reserve 1/8th of 47-bit VA on start
(16TB). This implementation seems to be much closer to user-space ASAN
rather than to x86_64 KASAN (in particular it seems to be mostly
portable across archs and is not really x86-specific, which is good).
I think it's reasonable and good, but the implementation difference
with other kernel arches may be worth noting somewhere in comments.