[REGRESSION] NULL pointer dereference on ARM (AT91SAM9G25) during compaction

[David Hildenbrand]

On 11.02.25 10:29, Qi Zheng wrote:
> 
> 
> On 2025/2/11 17:14, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>> On 11.02.25 04:45, Qi Zheng wrote:
>>> Hi Russell,
>>>
>>> On 2025/2/11 01:03, Russell King (Oracle) wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Feb 10, 2025 at 05:49:38PM +0100, Ezra Buehler wrote:
>>>>> When running vanilla Linux 6.13 or newer (6.14-rc2) on the
>>>>> AT91SAM9G25-based GARDENA smart Gateway, we are seeing a NULL pointer
>>>>> dereference resulting in a kernel panic. The culprit seems to be commit
>>>>> fc9c45b71f43 ("arm: adjust_pte() usepte_offset_map_rw_nolock()").
>>>>> Reverting the commit apparently fixes the issue.
>>>>
>>>> The blamed commit is buggy:
>>>>
>>>> arch/arm/include/asm/tlbflush.h:
>>>> #define update_mmu_cache(vma, addr, ptep) \
>>>>            update_mmu_cache_range(NULL, vma, addr, ptep, 1)
>>>>
>>>> So vmf can be NULL. This didn't used to matter before this commit,
>>>> because vmf was not used by ARM's update_mmu_cache_range(). However,
>>>> the commit introduced a dereference of it, which now causes a NULL
>>>> point dereference.
>>>>
>>>> Not sure what the correct solution is, but at a guess, both:
>>>>
>>>>      if (ptl != vmf->ptl)
>>>>
>>>> need to become:
>>>>
>>>>      if (!vmf || ptl != vmf->ptl)
>>>
>>> No, we can't do that, because without using split PTE locks, we would
>>> use shared mm->page_table_lock, which would create a deadlock.
>>
>> Maybe we can simply special-case on CONFIG_SPLIT_PTE_PTLOCKS ?
>>
>> if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_SPLIT_PTE_PTLOCKS)) {
> 
> In this case, if two vmas map the same PTE page, then the same PTE lock
> will be held repeatedly. Right?

Hmm, the comment says:

         /*
          * This is called while another page table is mapped, so we
          * must use the nested version.  This also means we need to
          * open-code the spin-locking.
          */

"another page table" implies that it cannot be the same. But maybe that 
comment was also wrong?


-- 
Cheers,

David / dhildenb