There is a race in the COW logic. It contains a shortcut to avoid the
COW and reuse the page if we have the sole reference on the page,
however it is possible to have two racing do_wp_page()ers with one
causing the other to mistakenly believe it is safe to take the shortcut
when it is not. This could lead to data corruption.
Process 1 and process2 each have a wp pte of the same anon page (ie.
one forked the other). The page's mapcount is 2. Then they both
attempt to write to it around the same time...
proc1 proc2 thr1 proc2 thr2
CPU0 CPU1 CPU3
do_wp_page() do_wp_page()
trylock_page()
can_share_swap_page()
load page mapcount (==2)
reuse = 0
pte unlock
copy page to new_page
pte lock
page_remove_rmap(page);
trylock_page()
can_share_swap_page()
load page mapcount (==1)
reuse = 1
ptep_set_access_flags (allow W)
write private key into page
read from page
ptep_clear_flush()
set_pte_at(pte of new_page)
Fix this by moving the page_remove_rmap of the old page after the pte
clear and flush. Potentially the entire branch could be moved down
here, but in order to stay consistent, I won't (should probably move all
the *_mm_counter stuff with one patch).
Signed-off-by: Nick Piggin <npiggin@suse.de>
Acked-by: Hugh Dickins <hugh@veritas.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Nick Piggin