Re: [PATCH RESEND v6 00/16] mm: Page fault enhancements

From: David Hildenbrand
Date: Sun Mar 08 2020 - 08:50:14 EST


On 07.03.20 21:33, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 20.02.20 16:53, Peter Xu wrote:
>> [Resend v6]
>>
>> This is v6 of the series. It is majorly a rebase to 5.6-rc2, nothing
>> else to be expected (plus some tests after the rebase). Instead of
>> rewrite the cover letter I decided to use what we have for v5.
>>
>> Adding extra CCs for both Bobby Powers <bobbypowers@xxxxxxxxx> and
>> Brian Geffon <bgeffon@xxxxxxxxxx>.
>>
>> Online repo: https://github.com/xzpeter/linux/tree/mm-pf-signal-retry
>>
>> Any review comment is appreciated. Thanks,
>
> If I am not completely missing something (and all my testing today was
> wrong) there is a very simple reason why I *LOVE* this series and it made
> my weekend. It makes userfaultfd with concurrent discarding (e.g.,
> MADV_DONTNEED) of pages actually usable.
>
> The issue in current code is that between placing a page and waking
> up a waiter, somebody can zap the new placed page and trigger
> re-fault, triggering a SIGBUS and crashing an application where all
> memory is supposed to be accessible. And there is no real way to protect
> from that, because when the fault handler will be woken up and retry
> is not deterministic (e.g., making madvise(MADV_DONTNEED) and
> UFFDIO_ZEROPAGE mutually exclusive does not help).
>
> Find a simple reproducer at the end of this mail.

See below for another test case. It's not immediately clear why we can get
SIGBUS in this example, UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_REMOVE was supposed to protect
us from this - I thought. I think because the actual discard is delayed after
the UFFD_EVENT_REMOVE has been processed until the next UFFDIO_ZEROPAGE
takes place. Then we have the same race as in the other test case.

It also showcases why the use of UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_REMOVE in combination
with placing of pages in a handler can easily deadlock.

Before this series: SIGBUS - FAULT_FLAG_ALLOW_RETRY missing 70
After this series: Keeps on running

But the general behavior of UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_REMOVE is not
really useful in practice due to the possible deadlock that I work
around in this patch. You can drop the read() etc. from the loop
to observe the deadlock.

---
#include <string.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <stdint.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <pthread.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <poll.h>
#include <linux/userfaultfd.h>
#include <sys/mman.h>
#include <sys/syscall.h>
#include <sys/ioctl.h>

static int page_size;

static void *fault_handler_thread(void *arg)
{
const long uffd = (long) arg;
struct pollfd pollfd = {
.fd = uffd,
.events = POLLIN,
};
int ret;

while (true) {
struct uffdio_zeropage zeropage = {};
struct uffd_msg msg;
ssize_t nread;

if (poll(&pollfd, 1, -1) == -1) {
fprintf(stderr, "POLL failed: %s\n", strerror(errno));
exit(-1);
}
if (read(uffd, &msg, sizeof(msg)) != sizeof(msg)) {
fprintf(stderr, "READ failed\n");
exit(-1);
}
if (msg.event == UFFD_EVENT_REMOVE) {
continue;
}
if (msg.event != UFFD_EVENT_PAGEFAULT) {
fprintf(stderr, "Not UFFD_EVENT_PAGEFAULT\n");
exit(-1);
}

zeropage.range.start = msg.arg.pagefault.address;
zeropage.range.len = page_size;
/*
* The following loop would deadlock in case we get a MADV_DONTNEED
* at the wrong time. UFFDIO_ZEROPAGE won't be able to make progress
* until we processed the UFFD_EVENT_REMOVE. So we manually have
* to read and process the UFFD_EVENT_REMOVE. This is nasty, because
* once we could get multiple UFFD_EVENT_PAGEFAULT, this would no
* longer be usable - we would get another pagefault request, which
* we cannot process and so on ...
*/
do {
ret = ioctl(uffd, UFFDIO_ZEROPAGE, &zeropage);
if (ret && errno != EAGAIN) {
fprintf(stderr, "UFFDIO_ZEROPAGE failed:%s\n", strerror(errno));
exit(-1);
}
/*
* We're expecting a UFFD_EVENT_REMOVE event Soemtimes we
* get none ... ?
*/
if (read(uffd, &msg, sizeof(msg)) != sizeof(msg)) {
continue;
}
if (msg.event != UFFD_EVENT_REMOVE) {
fprintf(stderr, "Not a remove event\n");
continue;
}
} while (ret);
}
}

static void *discard_thread(void *arg)
{
while (true) {
if (madvise(arg, page_size, MADV_DONTNEED)) {
fprintf(stderr, "MADV_DONTNEED failed:%s\n", strerror(errno));
exit(-1);
}
printf("Discard!\n");
usleep(1000);
}
}

int main(void)
{
struct uffdio_register reg;
struct uffdio_api api = {
.api = UFFD_API,
.features = UFFD_FEATURE_EVENT_REMOVE,
};
pthread_t fault, discard;
long uffd;
char *area;

page_size = sysconf(_SC_PAGE_SIZE);

uffd = syscall(__NR_userfaultfd, O_CLOEXEC | O_NONBLOCK);
if (uffd == -1) {
fprintf(stderr, "Could not create uffd: %s\n", strerror(errno));
exit(-1);
}
if (ioctl(uffd, UFFDIO_API, &api) == -1) {
fprintf(stderr, "UFFDIO_API failed: %s\n", strerror(errno));
exit(-1);
}

area = mmap(NULL, page_size, PROT_READ | PROT_WRITE,
MAP_PRIVATE | MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0);
if (area == MAP_FAILED) {
fprintf(stderr, "Could not allocate memory");
exit(-1);
}

reg.range.start = (uint64_t) area;
reg.range.len = page_size,
reg.mode = UFFDIO_REGISTER_MODE_MISSING;
if (ioctl(uffd, UFFDIO_REGISTER, &reg) == -1) {
fprintf(stderr, "UFFDIO_REGISTER failed: %s\n", strerror(errno));
exit(-1);
}

/* thread to provide zeropages */
if (pthread_create(&fault, NULL, fault_handler_thread,
(void *) uffd)) {
fprintf(stderr, "Could not create fault handing thread");
exit(-1);
}
/* thread to discard the page */
if (pthread_create(&discard, NULL, discard_thread,
(void *) area)) {
fprintf(stderr, "Could not create discard thread");
exit(-1);
}

/* keep reading/writing the page */
while (true) {
area[7] = area[1];
usleep(10000);
printf("Progress!\n");
}
return 0;
}


--
Thanks,

David / dhildenb