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Date:   Thu, 20 Feb 2020 16:55:39 -0800
From:   Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To:     "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>
Cc:     linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>,
        "Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>,
        Michal Hocko <mhocko@kernel.org>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: Fix possible PMD dirty bit lost in
 set_pmd_migration_entry()
Message-Id: <20200220165539.5082db4b3e97eee474b0dd5d@linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20200220075220.2327056-1-ying.huang@intel.com>
References: <20200220075220.2327056-1-ying.huang@intel.com>
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On Thu, 20 Feb 2020 15:52:20 +0800 "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com> wrote:

> From: Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>
> 
> In set_pmd_migration_entry(), pmdp_invalidate() is used to change PMD
> atomically.  But the PMD is read before that with an ordinary memory
> reading.  If the THP (transparent huge page) is written between the
> PMD reading and pmdp_invalidate(), the PMD dirty bit may be lost, and
> cause data corruption.  The race window is quite small, but still
> possible in theory, so need to be fixed.
> 
> The race is fixed via using the return value of pmdp_invalidate() to
> get the original content of PMD, which is a read/modify/write atomic
> operation.  So no THP writing can occur in between.
> 
> The race has been introduced when the THP migration support is added
> in the commit 616b8371539a ("mm: thp: enable thp migration in generic
> path").  But this fix depends on the commit d52605d7cb30 ("mm: do not
> lose dirty and accessed bits in pmdp_invalidate()").  So it's easy to
> be backported after v4.16.  But the race window is really small, so it
> may be fine not to backport the fix at all.

Thanks.  I'm inclined to add a cc:stable to this one.  Silent data corruption is
pretty serious.