Message ID | 20230920021811.3095089-1-riel@surriel.com (mailing list archive) |
---|---|
Headers | show |
Series | hugetlbfs: close race between MADV_DONTNEED and page fault | expand |
On 09/19/23 22:16, riel@surriel.com wrote: > Malloc libraries, like jemalloc and tcalloc, take decisions on when > to call madvise independently from the code in the main application. > > This sometimes results in the application page faulting on an address, > right after the malloc library has shot down the backing memory with > MADV_DONTNEED. > > Usually this is harmless, because we always have some 4kB pages > sitting around to satisfy a page fault. However, with hugetlbfs > systems often allocate only the exact number of huge pages that > the application wants. > > Due to TLB batching, hugetlbfs MADV_DONTNEED will free pages outside of > any lock taken on the page fault path, which can open up the following > race condition: > > CPU 1 CPU 2 > > MADV_DONTNEED > unmap page > shoot down TLB entry > page fault > fail to allocate a huge page > killed with SIGBUS > free page Hi Rik, I think we discussed this before. Even with your changes there is no guarantee that the free'ed hugetlb page can not be stolen by another application. This is true even with hugetlb reservations as the reservation is consumed by the first fault. After the MADV_DONTNEED no reservation will exist, which allows another application to steal the page. This is VERY unlikely to actually happen. However, I do want to point out that it is possible. Of course, the way the code is today you will always fail if there is only one hugetlb page in the above scenario. So, your changes will help tremendously and I support them moving forward. I suspect you are already aware of this, but just want to make sure you are aware there are no guarantees here.