[PATCH] Fix lazy mode vmalloc synchronization for paravirt

From: Zachary Amsden
Date: Tue Aug 21 2007 - 21:36:21 EST


Found this looping Ubuntu installs with VMI.

If unlucky enough to hit a vmalloc sync fault during a lazy mode operation (from an IRQ handler for a module which was not yet populated in current page directory, or from inside copy_one_pte, which touches swap_map, and hit in an unused 4M region), the required PDE update would never get flushed, causing an infinite page fault loop.

This bug affects any paravirt-ops backend which uses lazy updates, I believe that makes it a bug in Xen, VMI and lguest. It only happens on LOWMEM kernels.

Currently for 2.6.23, but we'll want to backport to -stable as well.

Zach Touching vmalloc memory in the middle of a lazy mode update can generate
a kernel PDE update, which must be flushed immediately. The fix is to
leave lazy mode when doing a vmalloc sync.

Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@xxxxxxxxxx>

diff --git a/arch/i386/mm/fault.c b/arch/i386/mm/fault.c
diff --git a/arch/i386/mm/fault.c b/arch/i386/mm/fault.c
index 01ffdd4..fcb38e7 100644
--- a/arch/i386/mm/fault.c
+++ b/arch/i386/mm/fault.c
@@ -249,9 +249,10 @@ static inline pmd_t *vmalloc_sync_one(pgd_t *pgd, unsigned long address)
pmd_k = pmd_offset(pud_k, address);
if (!pmd_present(*pmd_k))
return NULL;
- if (!pmd_present(*pmd))
+ if (!pmd_present(*pmd)) {
set_pmd(pmd, *pmd_k);
- else
+ arch_flush_lazy_mmu_mode();
+ } else
BUG_ON(pmd_page(*pmd) != pmd_page(*pmd_k));
return pmd_k;
}