[patch RFC 00/15] mm/highmem: Provide a preemptible variant of kmap_atomic & friends

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Sun, Sep 20 2020 at 09:57, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 1:49 AM Thomas Gleixner <tglx at linutronix.de> wrote:
> Btw, looking at the stack code, Ithink your new implementation of it
> is a bit scary:
>
>    static inline int kmap_atomic_idx_push(void)
>    {
>   -       int idx = __this_cpu_inc_return(__kmap_atomic_idx) - 1;
>   +       int idx = current->kmap_ctrl.idx++;
>
> and now that 'current->kmap_ctrl.idx' is not atomic wrt
>
>  (a) NMI's (this may be ok, maybe we never do kmaps in NMIs, and with
> nesting I think it's fine anyway - the NMI will undo whatever it did)

Right. Nesting should be a non issue, but I don't think we have
kmap_atomic() in NMI context.

>  (b) the prev/next switch
>
> And that (b) part worries me. You do the kmap_switch_temporary() to
> switch the entries, but you do that *separately* from actually
> switching 'current' to the new value.
>
> So kmap_switch_temporary() looks safe, but I don't think it actually
> is. Because while it first unmaps the old entries and then remaps the
> new ones, an interrupt can come in, and at that point it matters what
> is *CURRENT*.
>
> And regardless of whether 'current' is 'prev' or 'next', that
> kmap_switch_temporary() loop may be doing the wrong thing, depending
> on which one had the deeper stack. The interrupt will be using
> whatever "current->kmap_ctrl.idx" is, but that might overwrite entries
> that are in the process of being restored (if current is still 'prev',
> but kmap_switch_temporary() is in the "restore @next's kmaps" pgase),
> or it might stomp on entries that have been pte_clear()'ed by the
> 'prev' thing.

Duh yes. Never thought about that.

> Alternatively, that process counter would need about a hundred lines
> of commentary about exactly why it's safe. Because I don't think it
> is.

I think the more obvious solution is to split the whole exercise:


  schedule()
     prepare_switch()
        unmap()

    switch_to()

    finish_switch()
        map()

That's safe because neither the unmap() nor the map() code changes
kmap_ctrl.idx. So if there is an interrupt coming in between unmap() and
switch_to() then a kmap_local() there will use the next entry. So we
could even do the unmap() with interrupts enabled (preemption disabled).
Same for the map() part.

To explain that we need only a few lines of commentry methinks.

Thanks,

        tglx