[PATCH] arm64/mm: Disable barrier batching in interrupt contexts

[Ryan Roberts]

On 12/05/2025 12:00, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> On Mon, May 12, 2025 at 11:22:40AM +0100, Ryan Roberts wrote:
>> Commit 5fdd05efa1cd ("arm64/mm: Batch barriers when updating kernel
>> mappings") enabled arm64 kernels to track "lazy mmu mode" using TIF
>> flags in order to defer barriers until exiting the mode. At the same
>> time, it added warnings to check that pte manipulations were never
>> performed in interrupt context, because the tracking implementation
>> could not deal with nesting.
>>
>> But it turns out that some debug features (e.g. KFENCE, DEBUG_PAGEALLOC)
>> do manipulate ptes in softirq context, which triggered the warnings.
>>
>> So let's take the simplest and safest route and disable the batching
>> optimization in interrupt contexts. This makes these users no worse off
>> than prior to the optimization. Additionally the known offenders are
>> debug features that only manipulate a single PTE, so there is no
>> performance gain anyway.
>>
>> There may be some obscure case of encrypted/decrypted DMA with the
>> dma_free_coherent called from an interrupt context, but again, this is
>> no worse off than prior to the commit.
>>
>> Some options for supporting nesting were considered, but there is a
>> difficult to solve problem if any code manipulates ptes within interrupt
>> context but *outside of* a lazy mmu region. If this case exists, the
>> code would expect the updates to be immediate, but because the task
>> context may have already been in lazy mmu mode, the updates would be
>> deferred, which could cause incorrect behaviour. This problem is avoided
>> by always ensuring updates within interrupt context are immediate.
>>
>> Fixes: 5fdd05efa1cd ("arm64/mm: Batch barriers when updating kernel mappings")
>> Reported-by: syzbot+5c0d9392e042f41d45c5 at syzkaller.appspotmail.com
>> Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/681f2a09.050a0220.f2294.0006.GAE@google.com/
>> Signed-off-by: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts at arm.com>
> 
> As per the request in the original report, please also add:
> 
> Reported-by: syzbot+5c0d9392e042f41d45c5 at syzkaller.appspotmail.com

I've already added it, 2 lines above your comment...

> 
> I'll give it a try as well with my configurations and let you know if
> there are any problems. In the meantime:
> 
> Reviewed-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas at arm.com>

Thanks!