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Date:   Fri, 7 Jul 2023 09:37:37 -0400
From:   Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
To:     Axel Rasmussen <axelrasmussen@google.com>
Cc:     Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Brian Geffon <bgeffon@google.com>,
        Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>,
        David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>,
        Gaosheng Cui <cuigaosheng1@huawei.com>,
        Huang Ying <ying.huang@intel.com>,
        Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>,
        James Houghton <jthoughton@google.com>,
        "Jan Alexander Steffens (heftig)" <heftig@archlinux.org>,
        Jiaqi Yan <jiaqiyan@google.com>,
        Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
        Kefeng Wang <wangkefeng.wang@huawei.com>,
        "Liam R. Howlett" <Liam.Howlett@oracle.com>,
        Miaohe Lin <linmiaohe@huawei.com>,
        Mike Kravetz <mike.kravetz@oracle.com>,
        "Mike Rapoport (IBM)" <rppt@kernel.org>,
        Muchun Song <muchun.song@linux.dev>,
        Nadav Amit <namit@vmware.com>,
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        Shuah Khan <shuah@kernel.org>,
        Suleiman Souhlal <suleiman@google.com>,
        Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>,
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        Yu Zhao <yuzhao@google.com>,
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        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 4/8] mm: userfaultfd: add new UFFDIO_POISON ioctl
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 <20230706225037.1164380-5-axelrasmussen@google.com>
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On Thu, Jul 06, 2023 at 03:50:32PM -0700, Axel Rasmussen wrote:
> The basic idea here is to "simulate" memory poisoning for VMs. A VM
> running on some host might encounter a memory error, after which some
> page(s) are poisoned (i.e., future accesses SIGBUS). They expect that
> once poisoned, pages can never become "un-poisoned". So, when we live
> migrate the VM, we need to preserve the poisoned status of these pages.
> 
> When live migrating, we try to get the guest running on its new host as
> quickly as possible. So, we start it running before all memory has been
> copied, and before we're certain which pages should be poisoned or not.
> 
> So the basic way to use this new feature is:
> 
> - On the new host, the guest's memory is registered with userfaultfd, in
>   either MISSING or MINOR mode (doesn't really matter for this purpose).
> - On any first access, we get a userfaultfd event. At this point we can
>   communicate with the old host to find out if the page was poisoned.
> - If so, we can respond with a UFFDIO_POISON - this places a swap marker
>   so any future accesses will SIGBUS. Because the pte is now "present",
>   future accesses won't generate more userfaultfd events, they'll just
>   SIGBUS directly.
> 
> UFFDIO_POISON does not handle unmapping previously-present PTEs. This
> isn't needed, because during live migration we want to intercept
> all accesses with userfaultfd (not just writes, so WP mode isn't useful
> for this). So whether minor or missing mode is being used (or both), the
> PTE won't be present in any case, so handling that case isn't needed.
> 
> Similarly, UFFDIO_POISON won't replace existing PTE markers. This might
> be okay to do, but it seems to be safer to just refuse to overwrite any
> existing entry (like a UFFD_WP PTE marker).
> 
> Signed-off-by: Axel Rasmussen <axelrasmussen@google.com>

I agree the current behavior is not as clear, especially after hwpoison
introduced.

uffdio-copy is special right now that it can overwrite a marker, so a buggy
userapp can also overwrite a poisoned entry, but it also means the userapp
is broken already, so may not really matter much.

While zeropage wasn't doing that. I think that was just overlooked - i
assume it has the same reasoning as uffdio-copy otherwise.. and no one just
used zeropage over a wp marker yet, or just got it work-arounded by
unprotect+zeropage.

Not yet sure whether it'll make sense to unify this a bit, but making the
new poison api to be strict look fine.  If you have any thoughts after
reading feel free to keep the discussion going, I can ack this one I think
(besides my rename request in 1st patch):

Acked-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>

-- 
Peter Xu