mm: pin address_space before dereferencing it while isolating an LRU page
authorMel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Thu, 1 Feb 2018 00:19:52 +0000 (16:19 -0800)
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Thu, 1 Feb 2018 01:18:39 +0000 (17:18 -0800)
Minchan Kim asked the following question -- what locks protects
address_space destroying when race happens between inode trauncation and
__isolate_lru_page? Jan Kara clarified by describing the race as follows

CPU1                                            CPU2

truncate(inode)                                 __isolate_lru_page()
  ...
  truncate_inode_page(mapping, page);
    delete_from_page_cache(page)
      spin_lock_irqsave(&mapping->tree_lock, flags);
        __delete_from_page_cache(page, NULL)
          page_cache_tree_delete(..)
            ...                                   mapping = page_mapping(page);
            page->mapping = NULL;
            ...
      spin_unlock_irqrestore(&mapping->tree_lock, flags);
      page_cache_free_page(mapping, page)
        put_page(page)
          if (put_page_testzero(page)) -> false
- inode now has no pages and can be freed including embedded address_space

                                                  if (mapping && !mapping->a_ops->migratepage)
- we've dereferenced mapping which is potentially already free.

The race is theoretically possible but unlikely.  Before the
delete_from_page_cache, truncate_cleanup_page is called so the page is
likely to be !PageDirty or PageWriteback which gets skipped by the only
caller that checks the mappping in __isolate_lru_page.  Even if the race
occurs, a substantial amount of work has to happen during a tiny window
with no preemption but it could potentially be done using a virtual
machine to artifically slow one CPU or halt it during the critical
window.

This patch should eliminate the race with truncation by try-locking the
page before derefencing mapping and aborting if the lock was not
acquired.  There was a suggestion from Huang Ying to use RCU as a
side-effect to prevent mapping being freed.  However, I do not like the
solution as it's an unconventional means of preserving a mapping and
it's not a context where rcu_read_lock is obviously protecting rcu data.

Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180104102512.2qos3h5vqzeisrek@techsingularity.net
Fixes: c82449352854 ("mm: compaction: make isolate_lru_page() filter-aware again")
Signed-off-by: Mel Gorman <mgorman@techsingularity.net>
Acked-by: Minchan Kim <minchan@kernel.org>
Cc: "Huang, Ying" <ying.huang@intel.com>
Cc: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
mm/vmscan.c

index 1a33c8e1e75897347c936c05a3771652e9873c3a..fdd3fc6be8625331c3b03d78670e8ecd4e092b32 100644 (file)
@@ -1415,14 +1415,24 @@ int __isolate_lru_page(struct page *page, isolate_mode_t mode)
 
                if (PageDirty(page)) {
                        struct address_space *mapping;
+                       bool migrate_dirty;
 
                        /*
                         * Only pages without mappings or that have a
                         * ->migratepage callback are possible to migrate
-                        * without blocking
+                        * without blocking. However, we can be racing with
+                        * truncation so it's necessary to lock the page
+                        * to stabilise the mapping as truncation holds
+                        * the page lock until after the page is removed
+                        * from the page cache.
                         */
+                       if (!trylock_page(page))
+                               return ret;
+
                        mapping = page_mapping(page);
-                       if (mapping && !mapping->a_ops->migratepage)
+                       migrate_dirty = mapping && mapping->a_ops->migratepage;
+                       unlock_page(page);
+                       if (!migrate_dirty)
                                return ret;
                }
        }