linux-toradex.git/mm/ksm.c, branch v2.6.32.53

ksm: fix NULL pointer dereference in scan_get_next_rmap_item()

2011-07-13T03:29:23+00:00

commit 2b472611a32a72f4a118c069c2d62a1a3f087afd upstream.

Andrea Righi reported a case where an exiting task can race against
ksmd::scan_get_next_rmap_item (http://lkml.org/lkml/2011/6/1/742) easily
triggering a NULL pointer dereference in ksmd.

ksm_scan.mm_slot == &ksm_mm_head with only one registered mm

CPU 1 (__ksm_exit)		CPU 2 (scan_get_next_rmap_item)
 				list_empty() is false
lock				slot == &ksm_mm_head
list_del(slot->mm_list)
(list now empty)
unlock
				lock
				slot = list_entry(slot->mm_list.next)
				(list is empty, so slot is still ksm_mm_head)
				unlock
				slot->mm == NULL ... Oops

Close this race by revalidating that the new slot is not simply the list
head again.

Andrea's test case:

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

#define BUFSIZE getpagesize()

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
	void *ptr;

	if (posix_memalign(&ptr, getpagesize(), BUFSIZE) < 0) {
		perror("posix_memalign");
		exit(1);
	}
	if (madvise(ptr, BUFSIZE, MADV_MERGEABLE) < 0) {
		perror("madvise");
		exit(1);
	}
	*(char *)NULL = 0;

	return 0;
}

Reported-by: Andrea Righi 
Tested-by: Andrea Righi 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Signed-off-by: Chris Wright 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

ksm: fix mlockfreed to munlocked

2010-01-06T23:05:22+00:00

2.6.33-rc1 commit 73848b4684e84a84cfd1555af78d41158f31e16b, adjusted
to include 31e855ea7173bdb0520f9684580423a9560f66e0's movement of
the unlock_page(oldpage), but omit other intervening cleanups.

When KSM merges an mlocked page, it has been forgetting to munlock it:
that's been left to free_page_mlock(), which reports it in /proc/vmstat
as unevictable_pgs_mlockfreed instead of unevictable_pgs_munlocked,
which indicates that such pages _might_ be left unevictable for long
after they should be evictable.  Call munlock_vma_page() to fix that.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

ksm: cond_resched in unstable tree

2009-11-09T17:55:44+00:00

KSM needs a cond_resched() for CONFIG_PREEMPT_NONE, in its unbounded
search of the unstable tree.  The stable tree cases already have one,
and originally there was one down inside get_user_pages();
but I missed it when I converted to follow_page() instead.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Acked-by: Izik Eidus 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

ksm: more on default values

2009-10-08T14:36:38+00:00

Adjust the max_kernel_pages default to a quarter of totalram_pages,
instead of nr_free_buffer_pages() / 4: the KSM pages themselves come from
highmem, and even on a 16GB PAE machine, 4GB of KSM pages would only be
pinning 32MB of lowmem with their rmap_items, so no need for the more
obscure calculation (nor for its own special init function).

There is no way for the user to switch KSM on if CONFIG_SYSFS is not
enabled, so in that case default run to KSM_RUN_MERGE.

Update KSM Documentation and Kconfig to reflect the new defaults.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Cc: Izik Eidus 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

ksm: change default values to better fit into mainline kernel

2009-09-24T14:20:56+00:00

Now that ksm is in mainline it is better to change the default values to
better fit to most of the users.

This patch change the ksm default values to be:

	ksm_thread_pages_to_scan = 100 (instead of 200)
	ksm_thread_sleep_millisecs = 20 (like before)
	ksm_run = KSM_RUN_STOP (instead of KSM_RUN_MERGE - meaning ksm is
	                        disabled by default)
	ksm_max_kernel_pages = nr_free_buffer_pages / 4 (instead of 2046)

The important aspect of this patch is: it disables ksm by default, and sets
the number of the kernel_pages that can be allocated to be a reasonable
number.

Signed-off-by: Izik Eidus 
Cc: Hugh Dickins 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

ksm: unmerge is an origin of OOMs

2009-09-22T14:17:33+00:00

Just as the swapoff system call allocates many pages of RAM to various
processes, perhaps triggering OOM, so "echo 2 >/sys/kernel/mm/ksm/run"
(unmerge) is liable to allocate many pages of RAM to various processes,
perhaps triggering OOM; and each is normally run from a modest admin
process (swapoff or shell), easily repeated until it succeeds.

So treat unmerge_and_remove_all_rmap_items() in the same way that we treat
try_to_unuse(): generalize PF_SWAPOFF to PF_OOM_ORIGIN, and bracket both
with that, to ask the OOM killer to kill them first, to prevent them from
spawning more and more OOM kills.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Acked-by: Izik Eidus 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

ksm: clean up obsolete references

2009-09-22T14:17:33+00:00

A few cleanups, given the munlock fix: the comment on ksm_test_exit() no
longer applies, and it can be made private to ksm.c; there's no more
reference to mmu_gather or tlb.h, and mmap.c doesn't need ksm.h.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Acked-by: Izik Eidus 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

ksm: sysfs and defaults

2009-09-22T14:17:32+00:00

At present KSM is just a waste of space if you don't have CONFIG_SYSFS=y
to provide the /sys/kernel/mm/ksm files to tune and activate it.

Make KSM depend on SYSFS?  Could do, but it might be better to provide
some defaults so that KSM works out-of-the-box, ready for testers to
madvise MADV_MERGEABLE, even without SYSFS.

Though anyone serious is likely to want to retune the numbers to their
taste once they have experience; and whether these settings ever reach
2.6.32 can be discussed along the way.

Save 1kB from tiny kernels by #ifdef'ing the SYSFS side of it.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Acked-by: Izik Eidus 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

ksm: fix deadlock with munlock in exit_mmap

2009-09-22T14:17:32+00:00

Rawhide users have reported hang at startup when cryptsetup is run: the
same problem can be simply reproduced by running a program int main() {
mlockall(MCL_CURRENT | MCL_FUTURE); return 0; }

The problem is that exit_mmap() applies munlock_vma_pages_all() to
clean up VM_LOCKED areas, and its current implementation (stupidly)
tries to fault in absent pages, for example where PROT_NONE prevented
them being faulted in when mlocking.  Whereas the "ksm: fix oom
deadlock" patch, knowing there's a race by which KSM might try to fault
in pages after exit_mmap() had finally zapped the range, backs out of
such faults doing nothing when its ksm_test_exit() notices mm_users 0.

So revert that part of "ksm: fix oom deadlock" which moved the
ksm_exit() call from before exit_mmap() to the middle of exit_mmap();
and remove those ksm_test_exit() checks from the page fault paths, so
allowing the munlocking to proceed without interference.

ksm_exit, if there are rmap_items still chained on this mm slot, takes
mmap_sem write side: so preventing KSM from working on an mm while
exit_mmap runs.  And KSM will bail out as soon as it notices that
mm_users is already zero, thanks to its internal ksm_test_exit checks.
So that when a task is killed by OOM killer or the user, KSM will not
indefinitely prevent it from running exit_mmap to release its memory.

This does break a part of what "ksm: fix oom deadlock" was trying to
achieve.  When unmerging KSM (echo 2 >/sys/kernel/mm/ksm), and even
when ksmd itself has to cancel a KSM page, it is possible that the
first OOM-kill victim would be the KSM process being faulted: then its
memory won't be freed until a second victim has been selected (freeing
memory for the unmerging fault to complete).

But the OOM killer is already liable to kill a second victim once the
intended victim's p->mm goes to NULL: so there's not much point in
rejecting this KSM patch before fixing that OOM behaviour.  It is very
much more important to allow KSM users to boot up, than to haggle over
an unlikely and poorly supported OOM case.

We also intend to fix munlocking to not fault pages: at which point
this patch _could_ be reverted; though that would be controversial, so
we hope to find a better solution.

Signed-off-by: Andrea Arcangeli 
Acked-by: Justin M. Forbes 
Acked-for-now-by: Hugh Dickins 
Cc: Izik Eidus 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

ksm: fix oom deadlock

2009-09-22T14:17:32+00:00

There's a now-obvious deadlock in KSM's out-of-memory handling:
imagine ksmd or KSM_RUN_UNMERGE handling, holding ksm_thread_mutex,
trying to allocate a page to break KSM in an mm which becomes the
OOM victim (quite likely in the unmerge case): it's killed and goes
to exit, and hangs there waiting to acquire ksm_thread_mutex.

Clearly we must not require ksm_thread_mutex in __ksm_exit, simple
though that made everything else: perhaps use mmap_sem somehow?
And part of the answer lies in the comments on unmerge_ksm_pages:
__ksm_exit should also leave all the rmap_item removal to ksmd.

But there's a fundamental problem, that KSM relies upon mmap_sem to
guarantee the consistency of the mm it's dealing with, yet exit_mmap
tears down an mm without taking mmap_sem.  And bumping mm_users won't
help at all, that just ensures that the pages the OOM killer assumes
are on their way to being freed will not be freed.

The best answer seems to be, to move the ksm_exit callout from just
before exit_mmap, to the middle of exit_mmap: after the mm's pages
have been freed (if the mmu_gather is flushed), but before its page
tables and vma structures have been freed; and down_write,up_write
mmap_sem there to serialize with KSM's own reliance on mmap_sem.

But KSM then needs to be careful, whenever it downs mmap_sem, to
check that the mm is not already exiting: there's a danger of using
find_vma on a layout that's being torn apart, or writing into page
tables which have been freed for reuse; and even do_anonymous_page
and __do_fault need to check they're not being called by break_ksm
to reinstate a pte after zap_pte_range has zapped that page table.

Though it might be clearer to add an exiting flag, set while holding
mmap_sem in __ksm_exit, that wouldn't cover the issue of reinstating
a zapped pte.  All we need is to check whether mm_users is 0 - but
must remember that ksmd may detect that before __ksm_exit is reached.
So, ksm_test_exit(mm) added to comment such checks on mm->mm_users.

__ksm_exit now has to leave clearing up the rmap_items to ksmd,
that needs ksm_thread_mutex; but shift the exiting mm just after the
ksm_scan cursor so that it will soon be dealt with.  __ksm_enter raise
mm_count to hold the mm_struct, ksmd's exit processing (exactly like
its processing when it finds all VM_MERGEABLEs unmapped) mmdrop it,
similar procedure for KSM_RUN_UNMERGE (which has stopped ksmd).

But also give __ksm_exit a fast path: when there's no complication
(no rmap_items attached to mm and it's not at the ksm_scan cursor),
it can safely do all the exiting work itself.  This is not just an
optimization: when ksmd is not running, the raised mm_count would
otherwise leak mm_structs.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins 
Acked-by: Izik Eidus 
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds