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Date:   Thu, 21 Oct 2021 20:06:43 -0700
From:   Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
To:     Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@gmail.com>
Cc:     linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        Nadav Amit <namit@vmware.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>,
        Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>, Yu Zhao <yuzhao@google.com>,
        Nick Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>, x86@kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm: use correct VMA flags when freeing page-tables
Message-Id: <20211021200643.770f9d7bd3469b2ec9d6c401@linux-foundation.org>
In-Reply-To: <20211021122322.592822-1-namit@vmware.com>
References: <20211021122322.592822-1-namit@vmware.com>
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On Thu, 21 Oct 2021 05:23:22 -0700 Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Nadav Amit <namit@vmware.com>
> 
> Consistent use of the mmu_gather interface requires a call to
> tlb_start_vma() and tlb_end_vma() for each VMA. free_pgtables() does not
> follow this pattern.
> 
> Certain architectures need tlb_start_vma() to be called in order for
> tlb_update_vma_flags() to update the VMA flags (tlb->vma_exec and
> tlb->vma_huge), which are later used for the proper TLB flush to be
> issued. Since tlb_start_vma() is not called, this can lead to the wrong
> VMA flags being used when the flush is performed.
> 
> Specifically, the munmap syscall would call unmap_region(), which unmaps
> the VMAs and then frees the page-tables. A flush is needed after
> the page-tables are removed to prevent page-walk caches from holding
> stale entries, but this flush would use the flags of the VMA flags of
> the last VMA that was flushed. This does not appear to be right.

Any thoughts on what the worst-case end-user cisible effects of this
would be?

Again, I'm wondering about the desirability of a -stable backport.

> Use tlb_start_vma() and tlb_end_vma() to prevent this from happening.
> This might lead to unnecessary calls to flush_cache_range() on certain
> arch's. If needed, a new flag can be added to mmu_gather to indicate
> that the flush is not needed.