Re: [PATCH v2] mm, hwpoison: Try to recover from copy-on write faults

From: Tony Luck
Date: Thu Oct 20 2022 - 16:05:54 EST


On Thu, Oct 20, 2022 at 09:57:04AM +0800, Shuai Xue wrote:
>
>
> 在 2022/10/20 AM1:08, Tony Luck 写道:
> > If the kernel is copying a page as the result of a copy-on-write
> > fault and runs into an uncorrectable error, Linux will crash because
> > it does not have recovery code for this case where poison is consumed
> > by the kernel.
> >
> > It is easy to set up a test case. Just inject an error into a private
> > page, fork(2), and have the child process write to the page.
> >
> > I wrapped that neatly into a test at:
> >
> > git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/aegl/ras-tools.git
> >
> > just enable ACPI error injection and run:
> >
> > # ./einj_mem-uc -f copy-on-write
> >
> > Add a new copy_user_highpage_mc() function that uses copy_mc_to_kernel()
> > on architectures where that is available (currently x86 and powerpc).
> > When an error is detected during the page copy, return VM_FAULT_HWPOISON
> > to caller of wp_page_copy(). This propagates up the call stack. Both x86
> > and powerpc have code in their fault handler to deal with this code by
> > sending a SIGBUS to the application.
>
> Does it send SIGBUS to only child process or both parent and child process?

This only sends a SIGBUS to the process that wrote the page (typically
the child, but also possible that the parent is the one that does the
write that causes the COW).

> >
> > Note that this patch avoids a system crash and signals the process that
> > triggered the copy-on-write action. It does not take any action for the
> > memory error that is still in the shared page. To handle that a call to
> > memory_failure() is needed.
>
> If the error page is not poisoned, should the return value of wp_page_copy
> be VM_FAULT_HWPOISON or VM_FAULT_SIGBUS? When is_hwpoison_entry(entry) or
> PageHWPoison(page) is true, do_swap_page return VM_FAULT_HWPOISON to caller.
> And when is_swapin_error_entry is true, do_swap_page return VM_FAULT_SIGBUS.

The page has uncorrected data in it, but this patch doesn't mark it
as poisoned. Returning VM_FAULT_SIGBUS would send an "ordinary" SIGBUS
that doesn't include the BUS_MCEERR_AR and "lsb" information. It would
also skip the:

"MCE: Killing %s:%d due to hardware memory corruption fault at %lx\n"

console message. So might result in confusion and attepmts to debug a
s/w problem with the application instead of blaming the death on a bad
DIMM.

> > But this cannot be done from wp_page_copy()
> > because it holds mmap_lock(). Perhaps the architecture fault handlers
> > can deal with this loose end in a subsequent patch?

I started looking at this for x86 ... but I have changed my mind
about this being a good place for a fix. When control returns back
to the architecture fault handler it no longer has easy access to
the physical page frame number. It has the virtual address, so it
could descend back into somee new mm/memory.c function to get the
physical address ... but that seems silly.

I'm experimenting with using sched_work() to handle the call to
memory_failure() (echoing what the machine check handler does using
task_work)_add() to avoid the same problem of not being able to directly
call memory_failure()).

So far it seems to be working. Patch below (goes on top of original
patch ... well on top of the internal version with mods based on
feedback from Dan Williams ... but should show the general idea)

With this patch applied the page does get unmapped from all users.
Other tasks that shared the page will get a SIGBUS if they attempt
to access it later (from the page fault handler because of
is_hwpoison_entry() as you mention above.

-Tony