Re: [PATCH] mm, slub, kasan: enable user tracking by default with KASAN=y

From: David Rientjes
Date: Wed Oct 21 2015 - 16:37:36 EST


On Wed, 21 Oct 2015, Andrey Ryabinin wrote:

> It's recommended to have slub's user tracking enabled with CONFIG_KASAN,
> because:
> a) User tracking disables slab merging which improves
> detecting out-of-bounds accesses.
> b) User tracking metadata acts as redzone which also improves
> detecting out-of-bounds accesses.
> c) User tracking provides additional information about object.
> This information helps to understand bugs.
>
> Currently it is not enabled by default. Besides recompiling the kernel
> with KASAN and reinstalling it, user also have to change the boot cmdline,
> which is not very handy.
>
> Enable slub user tracking by default with KASAN=y, since there is no
> good reason to not do this.
>
> Signed-off-by: Andrey Ryabinin <aryabinin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Makes sense. I don't imagine users of CONFIG_KASAN would be concerned
about additional performance degradation for better diagnostics.

> ---
> Documentation/kasan.txt | 3 +--
> lib/Kconfig.kasan | 3 +--
> mm/slub.c | 2 ++
> 3 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/Documentation/kasan.txt b/Documentation/kasan.txt
> index 94c88157..3107467 100644
> --- a/Documentation/kasan.txt
> +++ b/Documentation/kasan.txt
> @@ -28,8 +28,7 @@ the latter is 1.1 - 2 times faster. Inline instrumentation requires a GCC
> version 5.0 or later.
>
> Currently KASAN works only with the SLUB memory allocator.
> -For better bug detection and nicer report, enable CONFIG_STACKTRACE and put
> -at least 'slub_debug=U' in the boot cmdline.
> +For better bug detection and nicer report and enable CONFIG_STACKTRACE.
>
> To disable instrumentation for specific files or directories, add a line
> similar to the following to the respective kernel Makefile:

One too many "and"s in that sentence.

> diff --git a/lib/Kconfig.kasan b/lib/Kconfig.kasan
> index 39f24d6..0fee5ac 100644
> --- a/lib/Kconfig.kasan
> +++ b/lib/Kconfig.kasan
> @@ -15,8 +15,7 @@ config KASAN
> global variables requires gcc 5.0 or later.
> This feature consumes about 1/8 of available memory and brings about
> ~x3 performance slowdown.
> - For better error detection enable CONFIG_STACKTRACE,
> - and add slub_debug=U to boot cmdline.
> + For better error detection enable CONFIG_STACKTRACE.
>
> choice
> prompt "Instrumentation type"
> diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
> index ae28dff..f208835 100644
> --- a/mm/slub.c
> +++ b/mm/slub.c
> @@ -463,6 +463,8 @@ static void get_map(struct kmem_cache *s, struct page *page, unsigned long *map)
> */
> #ifdef CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG_ON
> static int slub_debug = DEBUG_DEFAULT_FLAGS;
> +#elif defined(CONFIG_KASAN)
> +static int slub_debug = SLAB_STORE_USER;
> #else
> static int slub_debug;
> #endif

Typically you would convert the #ifdef to
#if defined(CONFIG_SLUB_DEBUG_ON) as well.
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