Re: [PATCH v3 1/6] mm: khugepaged: ignore MADV_HUGEPAGE for shadow stacks

["David Hildenbrand (Arm)" <david@kernel.org>]

On 11/9/26 13:32, Yeoreum Yun wrote:
> commit 3efb9800557b ("mm: do not map the shadow stack as THP") makes
> shadow stack mappings default to VM_NOHUGEPAGE. However, userspace can
> still clear this flag and set VM_HUGEPAGE through madvise().
> 
> Allowing large folios in x86 shadow stacks exposes a limitation in
> folio_pte_batch_flags(). For example:
> 
>   1. create a shadow stack mapping.
>   2. apply MADV_HUGEPAGE and populate the mapping with a PTE-mapped
>      large folio.
>   3. apply MADV_DONTFORK to the first base page of that folio.
>   4. call fork().
> 
> In the parent, the first page remains writable and anonymous-exclusive,
> while the remaining pages shared with the child become write-protected
> and lose PageAnonExclusive(). These pages can still belong to the same
> large folio.
> 
> On x86, writable shadow-stack PTEs have _PAGE_RW clear and _PAGE_DIRTY
> set. Write-protected PTEs have both bits clear, with the dirty state
> preserved in _PAGE_SAVED_DIRTY.
> 
> When FPB_RESPECT_WRITE is set without FPB_RESPECT_DIRTY,
> folio_pte_batch_flags() normalizes PTEs using pte_mkclean(), which clears
> both dirty bits. This loses the distinction between writable
> shadow-stack PTEs and write-protected PTEs, allowing them to be grouped
> into the same batch. GUP-fast can encounter such a batch when walking
> across the VMA boundary created by MADV_DONTFORK.
> 
> Since there is no practical use-case shadow stack with large folio,
> ignore MADV_HUGEPAGE for shadow stack mappings, preserving their
> VM_NOHUGEPAGE setting and preventing large-folio allocation.
> 
> Fixes: 3efb9800557b ("mm: do not map the shadow stack as THP")
> Suggested-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>
> Signed-off-by: Yeoreum Yun <yeoreum.yun@arm.com>
> Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
> ---
>  mm/khugepaged.c | 3 +++
>  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/mm/khugepaged.c b/mm/khugepaged.c
> index 40fad28c52f6f..51ec043fa26c3 100644
> --- a/mm/khugepaged.c
> +++ b/mm/khugepaged.c
> @@ -367,6 +367,9 @@ int hugepage_madvise(struct vm_area_struct *vma,
>  {
>  	switch (advice) {
>  	case MADV_HUGEPAGE:
> +		/* PTE batching doesn't work reliably. */
> +		if (vma_test_single_mask(vma, VMA_SHADOW_STACK))
> +			break;
>  		*vm_flags &= ~VM_NOHUGEPAGE;
>  		*vm_flags |= VM_HUGEPAGE;
>  		break;
> 

Ack, I prefer this solution for now until we know how to make pte_mkclean() on
x86 shadow stack PTEs not result in an implicit pte_wrprotect().

Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>

-- 
Cheers,

David