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To:     "Jarkko Sakkinen" <jarkko@kernel.org>, dave.hansen@linux.intel.com,
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        "Thomas Gleixner" <tglx@linutronix.de>,
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        "Dave Hansen" <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Cc:     kai.huang@intel.com, reinette.chatre@intel.com,
        kristen@linux.intel.com, seanjc@google.com, stable@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86/sgx: fix a NULL pointer
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Date:   Tue, 18 Jul 2023 16:22:45 -0500
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From:   "Haitao Huang" <haitao.huang@linux.intel.com>
Organization: Intel
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On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 15:56:27 -0500, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>  
wrote:

> On 7/18/23 13:32, Haitao Huang wrote:
> ...
>> Ignore VA pages for now. Say for a system with 10 page EPC, 2 enclaves,
>> each needs 5 pages non-SECS so total demand would be 12 pages. The ksgxd
>> would only need to swap out 2 pages at the most to get one enclave fully
>> loaded with 6 pages, and the other one with 4 pages. There is no chance
>> the ksgxd would swap any one of two SECS pages.
>>
>> We would need at least one enclave A of 10 pages total to squeeze out
>> the other B completely. For that to happen B pretty much has to be
>> sleeping all the time so the LRU based reclaiming would hit it but not
>> pages of A. So no chance to hit #PF on pages of B still.
>>
>> So some minimal pressure is needed to ensure SECS swapped. The higher
>> the pressure the higher the chance to hit #PF while SECS is swapped.
>
> What would the second-to-last non-SECS page be?  A thread control page?
> VA page?
>
> As long as *that* page can generate a page fault, then you only need two
> pages for this scenario to happen:
>
> 1. Reclaimer takes encl->lock
> 2. #PF occurs from another thread, blocks on encl->lock
> 3. SECS is reclaimed
> 4. encl->lock released
> 5. #PF sees reclaimed SECS
>
>
I agree this is the race. But for this to happen, that is at #1 you have  
only one non-SECS page left so #3 can happen. That means it is already  
high pressure because reclaimer has swapped all other non-SECS.
In my example of two enclaves of 5 non-EPC pages. #3 won't happen because  
you don't reach #1 with only one non-SECS left.

Thanks
Haitao