[RFC PATCH v2 1/3] mm/huge_memory: make persistent huge zero folio read-only

[Xueyuan Chen <xueyuan.chen21@gmail.com>]

The huge zero folio is shared globally, and its contents should never
change after initialization. As Jann Horn pointed out[1], the kernel has
had bugs, including security bugs, where read-only pages were later written
to. If the persistent huge zero folio is read-only in the direct map, such
writes fault instead of silently corrupting the shared zero contents.

Add arch_make_pages_readonly() so mm code can request read-only direct-map
protection for a page range. Direct-map protection is
architecture-specific, so the generic weak implementation does nothing.

This was inspired by Jann Horn's read-only zero page work[1] and follow-up
discussion[2] with Yang Shi.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/20260508-ro-zeropage-v1-1-9808abc20b49@google.com/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-mm/CAHbLzkrXXe7r3n3jXgDKtwZhRqj=jDx9E6dLOULohnhBguvi9A@mail.gmail.com/

Suggested-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Suggested-by: David Hildenbrand <david@kernel.org>
Co-developed-by: Lance Yang <lance.yang@linux.dev>
Signed-off-by: Lance Yang <lance.yang@linux.dev>
Signed-off-by: Xueyuan Chen <xueyuan.chen21@gmail.com>
---
 include/linux/mm.h |  2 ++
 mm/huge_memory.c   | 13 ++++++++++++-
 2 files changed, 14 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/include/linux/mm.h b/include/linux/mm.h
index 0f2612a70fb1..02d33cf45b01 100644
--- a/include/linux/mm.h
+++ b/include/linux/mm.h
@@ -2936,6 +2936,8 @@ static inline int arch_make_folio_accessible(struct folio *folio)
 }
 #endif
 
+bool arch_make_pages_readonly(struct page *page, int nr_pages);
+
 /*
  * Some inline functions in vmstat.h depend on page_zone()
  */
diff --git a/mm/huge_memory.c b/mm/huge_memory.c
index b81d1ecb434b..2e9d01dc1197 100644
--- a/mm/huge_memory.c
+++ b/mm/huge_memory.c
@@ -308,6 +308,11 @@ static unsigned long shrink_huge_zero_folio_scan(struct shrinker *shrink,
 	return 0;
 }
 
+bool __weak arch_make_pages_readonly(struct page *page, int nr_pages)
+{
+	return false;
+}
+
 static struct shrinker *huge_zero_folio_shrinker;
 
 #ifdef CONFIG_SYSFS
@@ -982,8 +987,14 @@ static int __init thp_shrinker_init(void)
 		 * that get_huge_zero_folio() will most likely not fail as
 		 * thp_shrinker_init() is invoked early on during boot.
 		 */
-		if (!get_huge_zero_folio())
+		if (!get_huge_zero_folio()) {
 			pr_warn("Allocating persistent huge zero folio failed\n");
+			return 0;
+		}
+
+		arch_make_pages_readonly(folio_page(huge_zero_folio, 0),
+					HPAGE_PMD_NR);
+
 		return 0;
 	}
 
-- 
2.47.3