Re: [PATCH] mm/sparsemem: fix race in accessing memory_section->usage

[Charan Teja Kalla]

Thanks Andrew/David,

On 10/16/2023 1:53 PM, David Hildenbrand wrote:
>>> The below race is observed on a PFN which falls into the device memory
>>> region with the system memory configuration where PFN's are such that
>>> [ZONE_NORMAL ZONE_DEVICE  ZONE_NORMAL]. Since normal zone start and
>>> end pfn contains the device memory PFN's as well, the compaction
>>> triggered will try on the device memory PFN's too though they end up in
>>> NOP(because pfn_to_online_page() returns NULL for ZONE_DEVICE memory
>>> sections). When from other core, the section mappings are being removed
>>> for the ZONE_DEVICE region, that the PFN in question belongs to,
>>> on which compaction is currently being operated is resulting into the
>>> kernel crash with CONFIG_SPASEMEM_VMEMAP enabled.
>>
>> Seems this bug is four years old, yes?  It must be quite hard to hit.
> 
> From the description, it's not quite clear to me if this was actually
> hit -- usually people include the dmesg bug/crash info.

On Snapdragon SoC,  with the mentioned memory configuration of PFN's as
[ZONE_NORMAL ZONE_DEVICE  ZONE_NORMAL],  we are able to see bunch of
issues daily while testing on a device farm.

I note that from next time on wards will send the demsg bug/crash info
for these type of issues. For this particular issue below is the log.
Though the below log is not directly pointing to the
pfn_section_valid(){ ms->usage;}, when we loaded this dump on T32
lauterbach tool, it is pointing.

[  540.578056] Unable to handle kernel NULL pointer dereference at
virtual address 0000000000000000
[  540.578068] Mem abort info:
[  540.578070]   ESR = 0x0000000096000005
[  540.578073]   EC = 0x25: DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits
[  540.578077]   SET = 0, FnV = 0
[  540.578080]   EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
[  540.578082]   FSC = 0x05: level 1 translation fault
[  540.578085] Data abort info:
[  540.578086]   ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000005
[  540.578088]   CM = 0, WnR = 0
[  540.579431] pstate: 82400005 (Nzcv daif +PAN -UAO +TCO -DIT -SSBS
BTYPE=--)
[  540.579436] pc : __pageblock_pfn_to_page+0x6c/0x14c
[  540.579454] lr : compact_zone+0x994/0x1058
[  540.579460] sp : ffffffc03579b510
[  540.579463] x29: ffffffc03579b510 x28: 0000000000235800 x27:
000000000000000c
[  540.579470] x26: 0000000000235c00 x25: 0000000000000068 x24:
ffffffc03579b640
[  540.579477] x23: 0000000000000001 x22: ffffffc03579b660 x21:
0000000000000000
[  540.579483] x20: 0000000000235bff x19: ffffffdebf7e3940 x18:
ffffffdebf66d140
[  540.579489] x17: 00000000739ba063 x16: 00000000739ba063 x15:
00000000009f4bff
[  540.579495] x14: 0000008000000000 x13: 0000000000000000 x12:
0000000000000001
[  540.579501] x11: 0000000000000000 x10: 0000000000000000 x9 :
ffffff897d2cd440
[  540.579507] x8 : 0000000000000000 x7 : 0000000000000000 x6 :
ffffffc03579b5b4
[  540.579512] x5 : 0000000000027f25 x4 : ffffffc03579b5b8 x3 :
0000000000000001
[  540.579518] x2 : ffffffdebf7e3940 x1 : 0000000000235c00 x0 :
0000000000235800
[  540.579524] Call trace:
[  540.579527]  __pageblock_pfn_to_page+0x6c/0x14c
[  540.579533]  compact_zone+0x994/0x1058
[  540.579536]  try_to_compact_pages+0x128/0x378
[  540.579540]  __alloc_pages_direct_compact+0x80/0x2b0
[  540.579544]  __alloc_pages_slowpath+0x5c0/0xe10
[  540.579547]  __alloc_pages+0x250/0x2d0
[  540.579550]  __iommu_dma_alloc_noncontiguous+0x13c/0x3fc
[  540.579561]  iommu_dma_alloc+0xa0/0x320
[  540.579565]  dma_alloc_attrs+0xd4/0x108

>>> Fix this issue by the below steps:
>>> a) Clear SECTION_HAS_MEM_MAP before freeing the ->usage.
>>> b) RCU protected read side critical section will either return NULL when
>>> SECTION_HAS_MEM_MAP is cleared or can successfully access ->usage.
>>> c) Synchronize the rcu on the write side and free the ->usage. No
>>> attempt will be made to access ->usage after this as the
>>> SECTION_HAS_MEM_MAP is cleared thus valid_section() return false.
> 
> 
> This affects any kind of memory hotunplug. When hotunplugging memory we
> will end up calling synchronize_rcu() for each and every memory section,
> which sounds extremely wasteful.
> 
> Can't we find a way to kfree_rcu() that thing and read/write the pointer
> using READ?ONCE?WRITE_ONCE instead?

I am inspired to use the synchronize_rcu() because of [1] where we did
use it in offline_page_ext(). And my limited understanding is that, a
user can trigger the offline operation more often than the unplug operation.

I agree here that there is a scope to use kfree_rcu() unlike in [1]. Let
me check for a way to use it.

[1]
https://lore.kernel.org/all/1661496993-11473-1-git-send-email-quic_charante@xxxxxxxxxxx/

Thanks,
Charan