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FAILED: patch "[PATCH] mm: close theoretical race where stale TLB entries could" failed to apply to 5.4-stable tree

PATCH [email protected] 1 participant 1 message Jun 20, 2025

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The patch below does not apply to the 5.4-stable tree.
If someone wants it applied there, or to any other stable or longterm tree, then please email the backport, including the original git commit id to <[email protected]>.

To reproduce the conflict and resubmit, you may use the following commands:

git fetch https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/ linux-5.4.y
git checkout FETCH_HEAD
git cherry-pick -x 383c4613c67c26e90e8eebb72e3083457d02033f
# <resolve conflicts, build, test, etc.>
git commit -s
git send-email --to '<[email protected]>' --in-reply-to '2025062029-saturday-conical-0eae@gregkh' --subject-prefix 'PATCH 5.4.y' HEAD^..

Possible dependencies:

thanks,

greg k-h

------------------ original commit in Linus's tree ------------------

From 383c4613c67c26e90e8eebb72e3083457d02033f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Ryan Roberts <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2025 10:28:07 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] mm: close theoretical race where stale TLB entries could
linger

Commit 3ea277194daa ("mm, mprotect: flush TLB if potentially racing with a parallel reclaim leaving stale TLB entries") described a theoretical race as such:

"""
Nadav Amit identified a theoretical race between page reclaim and mprotect due to TLB flushes being batched outside of the PTL being held.

He described the race as follows:

	CPU0                            CPU1
	----                            ----
					user accesses memory using RW PTE
					[PTE now cached in TLB]
	try_to_unmap_one()
	==> ptep_get_and_clear()
	==> set_tlb_ubc_flush_pending()
					mprotect(addr, PROT_READ)
					==> change_pte_range()
					==> [ PTE non-present - no flush ]

					user writes using cached RW PTE
	...

	try_to_unmap_flush()

The same type of race exists for reads when protecting for PROT_NONE and also exists for operations that can leave an old TLB entry behind such as munmap, mremap and madvise.
"""

The solution was to introduce flush_tlb_batched_pending() and call it under the PTL from mprotect/madvise/munmap/mremap to complete any pending tlb flushes.

However, while madvise_free_pte_range() and madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_range() were both retro-fitted to call flush_tlb_batched_pending() immediately after initially acquiring the PTL, they both temporarily release the PTL to split a large folio if they stumble upon one. In this case, where re-acquiring the PTL flush_tlb_batched_pending() must be called again, but it previously was not. Let's fix that.

There are 2 Fixes: tags here: the first is the commit that fixed madvise_free_pte_range(). The second is the commit that added madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_range(), which looks like it copy/pasted the faulty pattern from madvise_free_pte_range().

This is a theoretical bug discovered during code review.

Fixes 3ea277194daa ("mm, mprotect: flush TLB if potentially racing with a parallel reclaim leaving stale TLB entries")
Fixes 9c276cc65a58 ("mm: introduce MADV_COLD")
Cc Liam Howlett <[email protected]>
Cc Lorenzo Stoakes <[email protected]>
Cc Mel Gorman <mgorman <[email protected]>
Cc Vlastimil Babka <[email protected]>
mm/madvise.c +2 -0
index 5f7a66a1617e..1d44a35ae85c 100644
@@ -508,6 +508,7 @@ static int madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_range(pmd_t *pmd,
 					pte_offset_map_lock(mm, pmd, addr, &ptl);
 				if (!start_pte)
 					break;
+				flush_tlb_batched_pending(mm);
 				arch_enter_lazy_mmu_mode();
 				if (!err)
 					nr = 0;
@@ -741,6 +742,7 @@ static int madvise_free_pte_range(pmd_t *pmd, unsigned long addr,
 				start_pte = pte;
 				if (!start_pte)
 					break;
+				flush_tlb_batched_pending(mm);
 				arch_enter_lazy_mmu_mode();
 				if (!err)
 					nr = 0;