Re: [PATCH] Use MM_VM_SIZE in exit_mmap

From: Nick Piggin
Date: Tue Jan 25 2005 - 19:24:48 EST


[Hi, please cc Andi on 4 level page tables stuff too]

Anton Blanchard wrote:
Hi,

The 4 level pagetable code changed the exit_mmap code to rely on
TASK_SIZE. On some architectures (eg ppc64 and ia64), this is a per task
property and bad things can happen in certain circumstances when using
it.

It is possible for one task to end up "owning" an mm from another - we
have seen this with the procfs code when process 1 accesses
/proc/pid/cmdline of process 2 while it is exiting. Process 2 exits
but does not tear its mm down. Later on process 1 finishes with the proc
file and the mm gets torn down at this point.

Now if process 1 was 32bit and process 2 was 64bit then we end up using
a bad value for TASK_SIZE in exit_mmap. We only tear down part of the
address space and leave half initialised pagetables and entries in the
MMU etc.

MM_VM_SIZE() was created for this purpose (and is used in the next line
for tlb_finish_mmu), so use it. I moved the PGD round up of TASK_SIZE
into the default MM_VM_SIZE.


Yep, looks like the right thing to do. I don't know about moving the
rounding into MM_VM_SIZE though - it is basically just a requirement of
clear_page_range. Might be better to leave it there?

As an aside, all architectures except one define FIRST_USER_PGD_NR as 0:

include/asm-arm26/pgtable.h:#define FIRST_USER_PGD_NR 1

It would be nice to get rid of one more magic constant and just clear
from 0 ... MM_VM_SIZE(). That would make it consistent with the
tlb_flush_mmu call below it too.


Considering the comments by Ian and Russell, can we remove the special
casing by going in the other direction; feed FIRST_USER_PGD_NR * PGDIR_SIZE
to tlb_finish_mmu? Ian, Russell, this would only be a change to your
architectures... so long as your tlb_finish_mmu isn't doing something
special when it sees a zero argument AFAIKS that would be OK?

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