FAILED: patch "[PATCH] mm/rmap: fix missing barrier between anon_vma init and" failed to apply to 6.18-stable tree

The patch below does not apply to the 6.18-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-6.18.y
git checkout FETCH_HEAD
git cherry-pick -x b6ac0b3f6013c168f22cad97e79967accacb08e1
# <resolve conflicts, build, test, etc.>
git commit -s
git send-email --to '<[email protected]>' --in-reply-to '2026092945-shale-evident-4fec@gregkh' --subject-prefix 'PATCH 6.18.y' 'HEAD^..'

Possible dependencies:

thanks,

greg k-h

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

From b6ac0b3f6013c168f22cad97e79967accacb08e1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jinjiang Tu <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2026 20:29:24 +0800
Subject: [PATCH] mm/rmap: fix missing barrier between anon_vma init and
vma->anon_vma publish

On arm64 server, we find that a task trying to grab the anon_vma lock triggers hungtask.

INFO: task main:2354726 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
      Tainted: G            E     5.10.0-0021.aarch64 #1
"echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
task:main            state:D stack:    0 pid:2354726 ppid:2350673 flags:0x00000a01
Call trace:
 __switch_to+0x7c/0xbc
 __schedule+0x3b4/0x8a0
 schedule+0x50/0xe0
 rwsem_down_write_slowpath+0x3cc/0x6cc
 down_write+0x60/0x260
 __anon_vma_prepare+0x6c/0x210
 do_anonymous_page+0x258/0x660
 handle_pte_fault+0x188/0x214
 __handle_mm_fault+0x1b0/0x380
 handle_mm_fault+0xf4/0x284
 do_page_fault+0x19c/0x494
 do_translation_fault+0xcc/0xf8
 do_mem_abort+0x48/0xac
 el0_da+0x44/0x80
 el0_sync_handler+0x88/0xb4
 el0_sync+0x160/0x180

After analyzing the vmcore, we found the anon_vma->root->rwsem.count is -1. There is another anon_vma whose anon_vma->root->rwsem.count is 1, the anon_vma->root->rwsem.owner shows the lock is held, but the stack of the task shows the task doesn't hold the anon_vma lock.

After adding more debugging info, we found __anon_vma_prepare() reuses anon_vma and triggers the UAF of anon_vma->root due to missing memory barrier, leading to locking and unlocking two different anon_vma->root, thus leading to an anon_vma will never be unlocked, and another anon_vma couldn't be locked anymore.

This race requires two adjacent VMAs that are not merged but are anon_vma-compatible (e.g., they differ in VMA_ACCESS_FLAGS that can be changed by mprotect()). Two threads fault on each VMA concurrently, both calling __anon_vma_prepare() with only mmap_lock held for reading.

THREAD A THREAD B
__anon_vma_prepare __anon_vma_prepare
find_mergeable_anon_vma() -> NULL
anon_vma = anon_vma_alloc();
anon_vma->root = anon_vma;
// the two stores may be reordered

 vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
                                   // finds A's anon_vma
                                   anon_vma = find_mergeable_anon_vma(vma);
                                   anon_vma_lock_write(anon_vma);
                                     // may still see the old root
                                     down_write(&anon_vma->root->rwsem);
                                   anon_vma_unlock_write(anon_vma);
                                     // see the new root, never unlock old
                                     up_write(&anon_vma->root->rwsem);

thread A triggers page fault and calls __anon_vma_prepare() to prepare anon_vma for the faulting vma. __anon_vma_prepare() allocates and initializes a new anon_vma, and then publishes it to the vma with a plain store. anon_vma_prepare() only requires the mmap_lock to be held for reading, so two threads can fault on adjacent VMAs at the same time. While thread A publishes a new anon_vma, thread B could find the anon_vma via find_mergeable_anon_vma() and then locks anon_vma->root->rwsem.

The store to anon_vma->root in anon_vma_alloc() and the store to vma->anon_vma can be reordered. The anon_vma_lock_write() and spin_lock() only provide acquire semantics, which do not prevent prior stores from being reordered after them. The release semantics of the corresponding spin_unlock() and anon_vma_unlock_write() come too late, the store to vma->anon_vma is already published before they take effect. As a result, thread B can observe the following order:

    vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
    anon_vma->root = anon_vma;

The anon_vma slab is SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU, so a newly allocated anon_vma may reuse memory from a previously freed one. The constructor (anon_vma_ctor) does not reset anon_vma->root, and __put_anon_vma() doesn't clear it either, so the old root value persists until anon_vma_alloc() overwrites it. If that store isn't visible, thread B reads a root that points to the old anon_vma and locks it.

As a result, thread B can call anon_vma_lock_write() with the old root, and call anon_vma_unlock_write() with the new root, leading to an anon_vma will never be unlocked, and another anon_vma couldn't be locked anymore (its count is dropped from 0 to -1 due to wrong unlock).

To fix it, change the plain store vma->anon_vma = anon_vma to store release, so that the fields of anon_vma are visible before anon_vma is published to vma->anon_vma.

At read side, the load of anon_vma and anon_vma->root have address dependency. According to Documentation/memory-barriers.txt and some investigations, only Alpha needs address-dependency barriers and it has been handled by READ_ONCE() in reusable_anon_vma().

We reproduced this issue in v5.10 with KSM enabled. The kernel doesn't merge commit cf7e7a3503df ("mm: prevent KSM from breaking VMA merging for new VMAs"), so there are many adjacent VMAs that aren't merged but are compatible for anon_vma.

Without this fix, our production environment could reproduce this issue about 2-5 times each month. After adding a smp_mb() before anon_vma_lock_write(anon_vma) in __anon_vma_prepare(), which is different to this patch, this issue hasn't been reproduced for one month.

index d1819fd69938..f3b21aaa34ee 100644
@@ -209,7 +209,11 @@ int __anon_vma_prepare(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
 	/* page_table_lock to protect against threads */
 	spin_lock(&mm->page_table_lock);
 	if (likely(!vma->anon_vma)) {
-		vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
+		/*
+		 * Make anon_vma fields visible before anon_vma is published.
+		 * Paired with an address dependency in reusable_anon_vma().
+		 */
+		smp_store_release(&vma->anon_vma, anon_vma);
 		anon_vma_chain_assign(vma, avc, anon_vma);
 		anon_rmap_tree_insert(avc, anon_vma);
 		anon_vma->num_active_vmas++;

index f29abb30956b..9f0a0acf694a 100644
@@ -2094,6 +2094,13 @@ static int anon_vma_compatible(struct vm_area_struct *a, struct vm_area_struct *
  * acceptable for merging, so we can do all of this optimistically. But
  * we do that READ_ONCE() to make sure that we never re-load the pointer.
  *
+ * The READ_ONCE() establishes an address dependency between anon_vma and
+ * any access to its fields, which pairs with the assignment to
+ * vma->anon_vma performed with release semantics in __anon_vma_prepare().
+ *
+ * This is especially important as anon_vma's are SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU so
+ * accessing an uninitialised anon_vma's fields may result in a UAF.
+ *
  * IOW: that the "list_is_singular()" test on the anon_vma_chain only
  * matters for the 'stable anon_vma' case (ie the thing we want to avoid
  * is to return an anon_vma that is "complex" due to having gone through

@@ -2108,6 +2115,7 @@ static struct anon_vma *reusable_anon_vma(struct vm_area_struct *old,
 					  struct vm_area_struct *b)
 {
 	if (anon_vma_compatible(a, b)) {
+		/* Paired with a memory barrier in __anon_vma_prepare(). */
 		struct anon_vma *anon_vma = READ_ONCE(old->anon_vma);
 
 		if (anon_vma && list_is_singular(&old->anon_vma_chain))

From: Lorenzo Stoakes <[email protected]>

[ Upstream commit bfc2b13b05a1343bb60a85d840fd8956731866c5 ]

There is no reason to allocate the anon_vma_chain under the anon_vma write lock when cloning - we can in fact assign these to the destination VMA safely as we hold the exclusive mmap lock and therefore preclude anybody else accessing these fields.

We only need take the anon_vma write lock when we link rbtree edges from the anon_vma to the newly established AVCs.

This also allows us to eliminate the weird GFP_NOWAIT, GFP_KERNEL dance introduced in commit dd34739c03f2 ("mm: avoid anon_vma_chain allocation under anon_vma lock"), further simplifying this logic.

This should reduce lock anon_vma contention, and clarifies exactly where the anon_vma lock is required.

We cannot adjust __anon_vma_prepare() in the same way as this is only protected by VMA read lock, so we have to perform the allocation here under the anon_vma write lock and page_table_lock (to protect against racing threads), and we wish to retain the lock ordering.

With this change we can simplify cleanup_partial_anon_vmas() even further
- since we allocate AVC's without any lock taken and do not insert anything into the interval tree until after the allocations are tried, we can remove all logic pertaining to this and just free up AVC's only.

[Stable dependency adaptation for 6.18:
Keep the split of anon_vma_chain_link() into anon_vma_chain_assign() and explicit interval-tree insertion at all three callers. Retain the fork change that assigns the chain before taking the anon_vma write lock; the interval-tree insertion remains protected by that lock.

Drop the two-pass clone allocation and cleanup_partial_anon_vmas() changes. This tree lacks the prerequisite clone assertions, early unfaulted-VMA handling, simplified root locking, and partial-clone cleanup. Preserve the existing GFP_NOWAIT/GFP_KERNEL fallback, root locking, list traversal, reference accounting, and allocation-failure cleanup instead. No new functions are introduced.

The helper split supplies the context needed for b6ac0b3f6013 ("mm/rmap:
fix missing barrier between anon_vma init and vma->anon_vma publish") to merge cleanly while retaining this tree's interval-tree API. The memory barrier fix itself is left to that target commit.]

Stable-dep-of: b6ac0b3f6013 ("mm/rmap: fix missing barrier between anon_vma init and vma->anon_vma publish")

---
 mm/rmap.c | 17 ++++++++++-------
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

index 29f93ecf34800..4c4496a619712 100644
@@ -146,14 +146,13 @@ static void anon_vma_chain_free(struct anon_vma_chain *anon_vma_chain)
 	kmem_cache_free(anon_vma_chain_cachep, anon_vma_chain);
 }
 
-static void anon_vma_chain_link(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
-				struct anon_vma_chain *avc,
-				struct anon_vma *anon_vma)
+static void anon_vma_chain_assign(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
+				  struct anon_vma_chain *avc,
+				  struct anon_vma *anon_vma)
 {
 	avc->vma = vma;
 	avc->anon_vma = anon_vma;
 	list_add(&avc->same_vma, &vma->anon_vma_chain);
-	anon_vma_interval_tree_insert(avc, &anon_vma->rb_root);
 }
 
 /**

@@ -210,7 +209,8 @@ int __anon_vma_prepare(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
 	spin_lock(&mm->page_table_lock);
 	if (likely(!vma->anon_vma)) {
 		vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
-		anon_vma_chain_link(vma, avc, anon_vma);
+		anon_vma_chain_assign(vma, avc, anon_vma);
+		anon_vma_interval_tree_insert(avc, &anon_vma->rb_root);
 		anon_vma->num_active_vmas++;
 		allocated = NULL;
 		avc = NULL;

@@ -294,7 +294,8 @@ int anon_vma_clone(struct vm_area_struct *dst, struct vm_area_struct *src)
 		}
 		anon_vma = pavc->anon_vma;
 		root = lock_anon_vma_root(root, anon_vma);
-		anon_vma_chain_link(dst, avc, anon_vma);
+		anon_vma_chain_assign(dst, avc, anon_vma);
+		anon_vma_interval_tree_insert(avc, &anon_vma->rb_root);
 
 		/*
 		 * Reuse existing anon_vma if it has no vma and only one

@@ -378,8 +379,10 @@ int anon_vma_fork(struct vm_area_struct *vma, struct vm_area_struct *pvma)
 	get_anon_vma(anon_vma->root);
 	/* Mark this anon_vma as the one where our new (COWed) pages go. */
 	vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
+	anon_vma_chain_assign(vma, avc, anon_vma);
+	/* Now let rmap see it. */
 	anon_vma_lock_write(anon_vma);
-	anon_vma_chain_link(vma, avc, anon_vma);
+	anon_vma_interval_tree_insert(avc, &anon_vma->rb_root);
 	anon_vma->parent->num_children++;
 	anon_vma_unlock_write(anon_vma);
 

2.53.0

From: Jinjiang Tu <[email protected]>

[ Upstream commit b6ac0b3f6013c168f22cad97e79967accacb08e1 ]

On arm64 server, we find that a task trying to grab the anon_vma lock triggers hungtask.

INFO: task main:2354726 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
      Tainted: G            E     5.10.0-0021.aarch64 #1
"echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
task:main            state:D stack:    0 pid:2354726 ppid:2350673 flags:0x00000a01
Call trace:
 __switch_to+0x7c/0xbc
 __schedule+0x3b4/0x8a0
 schedule+0x50/0xe0
 rwsem_down_write_slowpath+0x3cc/0x6cc
 down_write+0x60/0x260
 __anon_vma_prepare+0x6c/0x210
 do_anonymous_page+0x258/0x660
 handle_pte_fault+0x188/0x214
 __handle_mm_fault+0x1b0/0x380
 handle_mm_fault+0xf4/0x284
 do_page_fault+0x19c/0x494
 do_translation_fault+0xcc/0xf8
 do_mem_abort+0x48/0xac
 el0_da+0x44/0x80
 el0_sync_handler+0x88/0xb4
 el0_sync+0x160/0x180

After analyzing the vmcore, we found the anon_vma->root->rwsem.count is -1. There is another anon_vma whose anon_vma->root->rwsem.count is 1, the anon_vma->root->rwsem.owner shows the lock is held, but the stack of the task shows the task doesn't hold the anon_vma lock.

After adding more debugging info, we found __anon_vma_prepare() reuses anon_vma and triggers the UAF of anon_vma->root due to missing memory barrier, leading to locking and unlocking two different anon_vma->root, thus leading to an anon_vma will never be unlocked, and another anon_vma couldn't be locked anymore.

This race requires two adjacent VMAs that are not merged but are anon_vma-compatible (e.g., they differ in VMA_ACCESS_FLAGS that can be changed by mprotect()). Two threads fault on each VMA concurrently, both calling __anon_vma_prepare() with only mmap_lock held for reading.

THREAD A THREAD B
__anon_vma_prepare __anon_vma_prepare
find_mergeable_anon_vma() -> NULL
anon_vma = anon_vma_alloc();
anon_vma->root = anon_vma;
// the two stores may be reordered

 vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
                                   // finds A's anon_vma
                                   anon_vma = find_mergeable_anon_vma(vma);
                                   anon_vma_lock_write(anon_vma);
                                     // may still see the old root
                                     down_write(&anon_vma->root->rwsem);
                                   anon_vma_unlock_write(anon_vma);
                                     // see the new root, never unlock old
                                     up_write(&anon_vma->root->rwsem);

thread A triggers page fault and calls __anon_vma_prepare() to prepare anon_vma for the faulting vma. __anon_vma_prepare() allocates and initializes a new anon_vma, and then publishes it to the vma with a plain store. anon_vma_prepare() only requires the mmap_lock to be held for reading, so two threads can fault on adjacent VMAs at the same time. While thread A publishes a new anon_vma, thread B could find the anon_vma via find_mergeable_anon_vma() and then locks anon_vma->root->rwsem.

The store to anon_vma->root in anon_vma_alloc() and the store to vma->anon_vma can be reordered. The anon_vma_lock_write() and spin_lock() only provide acquire semantics, which do not prevent prior stores from being reordered after them. The release semantics of the corresponding spin_unlock() and anon_vma_unlock_write() come too late, the store to vma->anon_vma is already published before they take effect. As a result, thread B can observe the following order:

    vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
    anon_vma->root = anon_vma;

The anon_vma slab is SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU, so a newly allocated anon_vma may reuse memory from a previously freed one. The constructor (anon_vma_ctor) does not reset anon_vma->root, and __put_anon_vma() doesn't clear it either, so the old root value persists until anon_vma_alloc() overwrites it. If that store isn't visible, thread B reads a root that points to the old anon_vma and locks it.

As a result, thread B can call anon_vma_lock_write() with the old root, and call anon_vma_unlock_write() with the new root, leading to an anon_vma will never be unlocked, and another anon_vma couldn't be locked anymore (its count is dropped from 0 to -1 due to wrong unlock).

To fix it, change the plain store vma->anon_vma = anon_vma to store release, so that the fields of anon_vma are visible before anon_vma is published to vma->anon_vma.

At read side, the load of anon_vma and anon_vma->root have address dependency. According to Documentation/memory-barriers.txt and some investigations, only Alpha needs address-dependency barriers and it has been handled by READ_ONCE() in reusable_anon_vma().

We reproduced this issue in v5.10 with KSM enabled. The kernel doesn't merge commit cf7e7a3503df ("mm: prevent KSM from breaking VMA merging for new VMAs"), so there are many adjacent VMAs that aren't merged but are compatible for anon_vma.

Without this fix, our production environment could reproduce this issue about 2-5 times each month. After adding a smp_mb() before anon_vma_lock_write(anon_vma) in __anon_vma_prepare(), which is different to this patch, this issue hasn't been reproduced for one month.

---
 mm/rmap.c | 6 +++++-
 mm/vma.c  | 8 ++++++++
 2 files changed, 13 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

index 4c4496a619712..4f7a44093a09f 100644
@@ -208,7 +208,11 @@ int __anon_vma_prepare(struct vm_area_struct *vma)
 	/* page_table_lock to protect against threads */
 	spin_lock(&mm->page_table_lock);
 	if (likely(!vma->anon_vma)) {
-		vma->anon_vma = anon_vma;
+		/*
+		 * Make anon_vma fields visible before anon_vma is published.
+		 * Paired with an address dependency in reusable_anon_vma().
+		 */
+		smp_store_release(&vma->anon_vma, anon_vma);
 		anon_vma_chain_assign(vma, avc, anon_vma);
 		anon_vma_interval_tree_insert(avc, &anon_vma->rb_root);
 		anon_vma->num_active_vmas++;

index dcaa2d8998bfb..5beb18b0610b0 100644
@@ -1979,6 +1979,13 @@ static int anon_vma_compatible(struct vm_area_struct *a, struct vm_area_struct *
  * acceptable for merging, so we can do all of this optimistically. But
  * we do that READ_ONCE() to make sure that we never re-load the pointer.
  *
+ * The READ_ONCE() establishes an address dependency between anon_vma and
+ * any access to its fields, which pairs with the assignment to
+ * vma->anon_vma performed with release semantics in __anon_vma_prepare().
+ *
+ * This is especially important as anon_vma's are SLAB_TYPESAFE_BY_RCU so
+ * accessing an uninitialised anon_vma's fields may result in a UAF.
+ *
  * IOW: that the "list_is_singular()" test on the anon_vma_chain only
  * matters for the 'stable anon_vma' case (ie the thing we want to avoid
  * is to return an anon_vma that is "complex" due to having gone through

@@ -1993,6 +2000,7 @@ static struct anon_vma *reusable_anon_vma(struct vm_area_struct *old,
 					  struct vm_area_struct *b)
 {
 	if (anon_vma_compatible(a, b)) {
+		/* Paired with a memory barrier in __anon_vma_prepare(). */
 		struct anon_vma *anon_vma = READ_ONCE(old->anon_vma);
 
 		if (anon_vma && list_is_singular(&old->anon_vma_chain))

2.53.0