Re: [PATCH v1 00/11] mm/kasan: support per-page shadow memory to reduce memory consumption

[Vladimir Murzin <vladimir.murzin@arm.com>]

On 30/05/17 10:45, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
> On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 11:39 AM, Vladimir Murzin
> <vladimir.murzin@arm.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 30/05/17 10:26, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
>>> On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 11:08 AM, Vladimir Murzin
>>> <vladimir.murzin@arm.com> wrote:
>>>>> <vladimir.murzin@arm.com> wrote:
>>>>>> On 30/05/17 09:31, Vladimir Murzin wrote:
>>>>>>> [This sender failed our fraud detection checks and may not be who they appear to be. Learn about spoofing at http://aka.ms/LearnAboutSpoofing]
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 30/05/17 09:15, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
>>>>>>>> On Tue, May 30, 2017 at 9:58 AM, Vladimir Murzin
>>>>>>>> <vladimir.murzin@arm.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 29/05/17 16:29, Dmitry Vyukov wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> I have an alternative proposal. It should be conceptually simpler and
>>>>>>>>>> also less arch-dependent. But I don't know if I miss something
>>>>>>>>>> important that will render it non working.
>>>>>>>>>> Namely, we add a pointer to shadow to the page struct. Then, create a
>>>>>>>>>> slab allocator for 512B shadow blocks. Then, attach/detach these
>>>>>>>>>> shadow blocks to page structs as necessary. It should lead to even
>>>>>>>>>> smaller memory consumption because we won't need a whole shadow page
>>>>>>>>>> when only 1 out of 8 corresponding kernel pages are used (we will need
>>>>>>>>>> just a single 512B block). I guess with some fragmentation we need
>>>>>>>>>> lots of excessive shadow with the current proposed patch.
>>>>>>>>>> This does not depend on TLB in any way and does not require hooking
>>>>>>>>>> into buddy allocator.
>>>>>>>>>> The main downside is that we will need to be careful to not assume
>>>>>>>>>> that shadow is continuous. In particular this means that this mode
>>>>>>>>>> will work only with outline instrumentation and will need some ifdefs.
>>>>>>>>>> Also it will be slower due to the additional indirection when
>>>>>>>>>> accessing shadow, but that's meant as "small but slow" mode as far as
>>>>>>>>>> I understand.
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> But the main win as I see it is that that's basically complete support
>>>>>>>>>> for 32-bit arches. People do ask about arm32 support:
>>>>>>>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/kasan-dev/Sk6BsSPMRRc/Gqh4oD_wAAAJ
>>>>>>>>>> https://groups.google.com/d/msg/kasan-dev/B22vOFp-QWg/EVJPbrsgAgAJ
>>>>>>>>>> and probably mips32 is relevant as well.
>>>>>>>>>> Such mode does not require a huge continuous address space range, has
>>>>>>>>>> minimal memory consumption and requires minimal arch-dependent code.
>>>>>>>>>> Works only with outline instrumentation, but I think that's a
>>>>>>>>>> reasonable compromise.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> .. or you can just keep shadow in page extension. It was suggested back in
>>>>>>>>> 2015 [1], but seems that lack of stack instrumentation was "no-way"...
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> [1] https://lkml.org/lkml/2015/8/24/573
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Right. It describes basically the same idea.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> How is page_ext better than adding data page struct?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> page_ext is already here along with some other debug options ;)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> But page struct is also here. What am I missing?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Probably, free room in page struct? I guess most of the page_ext stuff would
>>>> love to live in page struct, but... for instance, look at page idle tracking
>>>> which has to live in page_ext only for 32-bit.
>>>
>>>
>>> Sorry for my ignorance. What's the fundamental problem with just
>>> pushing everything into page struct?
>>
>> I think [1] has an answer for your question ;)
> 
> It also has an answer for why we should put it into page struct :)

Glad you find it useful ;) I'd be glad to see it lands into 32-bit world :)

Cheers
Vladimir

> 
> 
>>
>>>
>>> I don't see anything relevant in page struct comment. Nor I see "idle"
>>> nor "tracking" page struct. I see only 2 mentions of CONFIG_64BIT, but
>>> both declare the same fields just with different types (int vs short).
>>
>> Right, it is because implementation is based on page flags [1]:
>>
>> Note, since there is no room for extra page flags on 32 bit, this feature
>> uses extended page flags when compiled on 32 bit.
>>
>>
>> [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/565097/
>> [2] 33c3fc7 ("mm: introduce idle page tracking")
>