Re: mremap() use is racy

From: Hugh Dickins
Date: Tue Aug 23 2005 - 15:44:02 EST


On Tue, 23 Aug 2005, Ulrich Drepper wrote:
>
> One possible solution would be to add a flag to mremap() which allows
> mremap() to steal memory. In general that would be too dangerous but we
> could limit it to private, anonymous mappings which have no access
> permissions (i.e., PROT_NONE with MAP_PRIVATE and MAP_ANON). One
> explicitly has to allocate such blocks, they don't appear naturally.
> And the program in any case knows about the address space layout.
>
> So, how about adding MREMAP_MAPOVERNONE or so?

If the app can plan ahead as you're proposing, why doesn't it just
mmap the maximum it might need, mprotect PROT_NONE the end it doesn't
need yet, then progressively re-mprotect parts to make them accessible
as needed?

I'm missing what mremap gives you here that mprotect doesn't. Though
I do see that it would be nice not to be forced into mremap moving
all the time, because of other maps blocking you off: nice perhaps
to know what region of the layout is least likely to be so affected.

Hugh
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