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Date:   Tue, 12 Feb 2019 07:36:43 +0100
From:   Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>
To:     Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>
Cc:     Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
        linux-api@vger.kernel.org, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>,
        Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>,
        Dominique Martinet <asmadeus@codewreck.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>,
        Dave Chinner <david@fromorbit.com>,
        Kevin Easton <kevin@guarana.org>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
        Cyril Hrubis <chrubis@suse.cz>, Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill@shutemov.name>,
        Daniel Gruss <daniel@gruss.cc>, Josh Snyder <joshs@netflix.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] mm/mincore: provide mapped status when cached status
 is not allowed
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On Tue 12-02-19 04:44:30, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On Fri, 1 Feb 2019, Vlastimil Babka wrote:
> 
> > >> After "mm/mincore: make mincore() more conservative" we sometimes restrict the
> > >> information about page cache residency, which we have to do without breaking
> > >> existing userspace, if possible. We thus fake the resulting values as 1, which
> > >> should be safer than faking them as 0, as there might theoretically exist code
> > >> that would try to fault in the page(s) until mincore() returns 1.
> > >>
> > >> Faking 1 however means that such code would not fault in a page even if it was
> > >> not in page cache, with unwanted performance implications. We can improve the
> > >> situation by revisting the approach of 574823bfab82 ("Change mincore() to count
> > >> "mapped" pages rather than "cached" pages") but only applying it to cases where
> > >> page cache residency check is restricted. Thus mincore() will return 0 for an
> > >> unmapped page (which may or may not be resident in a pagecache), and 1 after
> > >> the process faults it in.
> > >>
> > >> One potential downside is that mincore() will be again able to recognize when a
> > >> previously mapped page was reclaimed. While that might be useful for some
> > >> attack scenarios, it's not as crucial as recognizing that somebody else faulted
> > >> the page in, and there are also other ways to recognize reclaimed pages anyway.
> > > 
> > > Is this really worth it? Do we know about any specific usecase that
> > > would benefit from this change? TBH I would rather wait for the report
> > > than add a hard to evaluate side channel.
> > 
> > Well it's not that complicated IMHO. Linus said it's worth trying, so
> > let's see how he likes the result. The side channel exists anyway as
> > long as process can e.g. check if its rss shrinked, and I doubt we are
> > going to remove that possibility.
> 
> So, where do we go from here?
> 
> Either Linus and Andrew like the mincore() return value tweak, or this 
> could be further discussed (*). But in either of the cases, I think 
> patches 1 and 2 should be at least queued for 5.1.

I would go with patch 1 for 5.1. Patches 2 still sounds controversial or
incomplete to me. And patch 3, well I will leave the decision to
Andrew/Linus.

> (*) I'd personally include it as well, as I don't see how it would break 
>     anything, it's pretty straightforward, and brings back some sanity to
>     mincore() return value.

-- 
Michal Hocko
SUSE Labs