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Date:   Tue, 15 Mar 2022 13:34:02 -0700 (PDT)
From:   Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
To:     David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
cc:     Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Andrew Yang <andrew.yang@mediatek.com>,
        Matthias Brugger <matthias.bgg@gmail.com>,
        Matthew Wilcox <willy@infradead.org>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>,
        David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com>,
        William Kucharski <william.kucharski@oracle.com>,
        Yang Shi <shy828301@gmail.com>, Marc Zyngier <maz@kernel.org>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-mm@kvack.org,
        linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
        linux-mediatek@lists.infradead.org, wsd_upstream@mediatek.com,
        Nicholas Tang <nicholas.tang@mediatek.com>,
        Kuan-Ying Lee <Kuan-Ying.Lee@mediatek.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] mm/migrate: fix race between lock page and clear
 PG_Isolated
In-Reply-To: <4cb789a5-c49c-f095-1f7e-67be65ba508a@redhat.com>
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References: <20220315030515.20263-1-andrew.yang@mediatek.com> <20220314212127.a2797926ee0ef8a7ad05dcaa@linux-foundation.org> <4cb789a5-c49c-f095-1f7e-67be65ba508a@redhat.com>
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On Tue, 15 Mar 2022, David Hildenbrand wrote:
> On 15.03.22 05:21, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > On Tue, 15 Mar 2022 11:05:15 +0800 Andrew Yang <andrew.yang@mediatek.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> When memory is tight, system may start to compact memory for large
> >> continuous memory demands. If one process tries to lock a memory page
> >> that is being locked and isolated for compaction, it may wait a long time
> >> or even forever. This is because compaction will perform non-atomic
> >> PG_Isolated clear while holding page lock, this may overwrite PG_waiters
> >> set by the process that can't obtain the page lock and add itself to the
> >> waiting queue to wait for the lock to be unlocked.
> >>
> >> CPU1                            CPU2
> >> lock_page(page); (successful)
> >>                                 lock_page(); (failed)
> >> __ClearPageIsolated(page);      SetPageWaiters(page) (may be overwritten)
> >> unlock_page(page);
> >>
> >> The solution is to not perform non-atomic operation on page flags while
> >> holding page lock.
> > 
> > Sure, the non-atomic bitop optimization is really risky and I suspect
> > we reach for it too often.  Or at least without really clearly
> > demonstrating that it is safe, and documenting our assumptions.
> 
> I agree. IIRC, non-atomic variants are mostly only safe while the
> refcount is 0. Everything else is just absolutely fragile.

It is normal and correct to use __SetPageFlag(page) on a page just allocated
from the buddy, and not yet logically visible to others: that has refcount 1.

Of course, it might have refcount 2 or more, through being speculatively
visible to get_page_unless_zero() users: perhaps through earlier usage of
the same struct page, or by physical scan of memmap.

Those few such others - compaction's isolate_migratepages_block() is the
one I know best - must be very careful in their sequence of operations.

Preliminary read-only checks are usually okay (but some VM_BUG_ON_PGFLAGS
are increasingly problematic: I've had to turn off that CONFIG), then
get_page_unless_zero(), then read-only check that the page is of the
manageable kind (PageLRU in my world), and only then can it be safe to
lock the page - which of course touches page flags, and so would be
problematic for a racing user's __SetPageFlag(page).

But PageMovable and PageIsolated are beyond my ken: I can't say there.

Hugh