Re: [PATCH RFC v2] mm: use per_vma lock for MADV_DONTNEED

[Qi Zheng]

Hi Jann,

On 5/30/25 10:06 PM, Jann Horn wrote:
> On Fri, May 30, 2025 at 12:44 PM Barry Song <21cnbao@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Certain madvise operations, especially MADV_DONTNEED, occur far more
> > frequently than other madvise options, particularly in native and Java
> > heaps for dynamic memory management.
> >
> > Currently, the mmap_lock is always held during these operations, even when
> > unnecessary. This causes lock contention and can lead to severe priority
> > inversion, where low-priority threads—such as Android's HeapTaskDaemon—
> > hold the lock and block higher-priority threads.
> >
> > This patch enables the use of per-VMA locks when the advised range lies
> > entirely within a single VMA, avoiding the need for full VMA traversal. In
> > practice, userspace heaps rarely issue MADV_DONTNEED across multiple VMAs.
> >
> > Tangquan’s testing shows that over 99.5% of memory reclaimed by Android
> > benefits from this per-VMA lock optimization. After extended runtime,
> > 217,735 madvise calls from HeapTaskDaemon used the per-VMA path, while
> > only 1,231 fell back to mmap_lock.
> >
> > To simplify handling, the implementation falls back to the standard
> > mmap_lock if userfaultfd is enabled on the VMA, avoiding the complexity of
> > userfaultfd_remove().
>
> One important quirk of this is that it can, from what I can see, cause
> freeing of page tables (through pt_reclaim) without holding the mmap
> lock at all:
>
> do_madvise [behavior=MADV_DONTNEED]
>    madvise_lock
>      lock_vma_under_rcu
>    madvise_do_behavior
>      madvise_single_locked_vma
>        madvise_vma_behavior
>          madvise_dontneed_free
>            madvise_dontneed_single_vma
>              zap_page_range_single_batched [.reclaim_pt = true]
>                unmap_single_vma
>                  unmap_page_range
>                    zap_p4d_range
>                      zap_pud_range
>                        zap_pmd_range
>                          zap_pte_range
>                            try_get_and_clear_pmd
>                            free_pte
>
> This clashes with the assumption in walk_page_range_novma() that
> holding the mmap lock in write mode is sufficient to prevent
> concurrent page table freeing, so it can probably lead to page table
> UAF through the ptdump interface (see ptdump_walk_pgd()).

Maybe not? The PTE page is freed via RCU in zap_pte_range(), so in the
following case:

cpu 0				cpu 1

ptdump_walk_pgd
--> walk_pte_range
    --> pte_offset_map (hold RCU read lock)
				zap_pte_range
				--> free_pte (via RCU)
        walk_pte_range_inner
        --> ptdump_pte_entry (the PTE page is not freed at this time)

IIUC, there is no UAF issue here?

If I missed anything please let me know.

Thanks,
Qi