The patch titled Subject: mm/userfaultfd: prevent busy looping for tasks with signals pending has been added to the -mm mm-hotfixes-unstable branch. Its filename is mm-userfaultfd-prevent-busy-looping-for-tasks-with-signals-pending.patch
This patch will shortly appear at https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/25-new.git/tree/patches...
This patch will later appear in the mm-hotfixes-unstable branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm
Before you just go and hit "reply", please: a) Consider who else should be cc'ed b) Prefer to cc a suitable mailing list as well c) Ideally: find the original patch on the mailing list and do a reply-to-all to that, adding suitable additional cc's
*** Remember to use Documentation/process/submit-checklist.rst when testing your code ***
The -mm tree is included into linux-next via the mm-everything branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm and is updated there every 2-3 working days
------------------------------------------------------ From: Jens Axboe axboe@kernel.dk Subject: mm/userfaultfd: prevent busy looping for tasks with signals pending Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2025 17:37:06 -0600
userfaultfd may use interruptible sleeps to wait on userspace filling a page fault, which works fine if the task can be reliably put to sleeping waiting for that. However, if the task has a normal (ie non-fatal) signal pending, then TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE sleep will simply cause schedule() to be a no-op.
For a task that registers a page with userfaultfd and then proceeds to do a write from it, if that task also has a signal pending then it'll essentially busy loop from do_page_fault() -> handle_userfault() until that fault has been filled. Normally it'd be expected that the task would sleep until that happens. Here's a trace from an application doing just that:
handle_userfault+0x4b8/0xa00 (P) hugetlb_fault+0xe24/0x1060 handle_mm_fault+0x2bc/0x318 do_page_fault+0x1e8/0x6f0 do_translation_fault+0x9c/0xd0 do_mem_abort+0x44/0xa0 el1_abort+0x3c/0x68 el1h_64_sync_handler+0xd4/0x100 el1h_64_sync+0x6c/0x70 fault_in_readable+0x74/0x108 (P) iomap_file_buffered_write+0x14c/0x438 blkdev_write_iter+0x1a8/0x340 vfs_write+0x20c/0x348 ksys_write+0x64/0x108 __arm64_sys_write+0x1c/0x38
where the task is looping with 100% CPU time in the above mentioned fault path.
Since it's impossible to handle signals, or other conditions like TIF_NOTIFY_SIGNAL that also prevents interruptible sleeping, from the fault path, use TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE with a short timeout even for vmf modes that would normally ask for INTERRUPTIBLE or KILLABLE sleep. Fatal signals will still be handled by the caller, and the timeout is short enough to hopefully not cause any issues. If this is the first invocation of this fault, eg FAULT_FLAG_TRIED isn't set, then the normal sleep mode is used.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/27c3a7f5-aad8-4f2a-a66e-ff5ae98f31eb@kernel.dk Fixes: 4064b9827063 ("mm: allow VM_FAULT_RETRY for multiple times") Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe axboe@kernel.dk Reported-by: Zhiwei Jiang qq282012236@gmail.com Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/io-uring/20250422162913.1242057-1-qq282012236@gmail.... Acked-by: Johannes Weiner hannes@cmpxchg.org Cc: Peter Xu peterx@redhat.com Cc: Matthew Wilcox willy@infradead.org Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton akpm@linux-foundation.org ---
fs/userfaultfd.c | 34 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++-------- 1 file changed, 26 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)
--- a/fs/userfaultfd.c~mm-userfaultfd-prevent-busy-looping-for-tasks-with-signals-pending +++ a/fs/userfaultfd.c @@ -334,15 +334,29 @@ out: return ret; }
-static inline unsigned int userfaultfd_get_blocking_state(unsigned int flags) +struct userfault_wait { + unsigned int task_state; + bool timeout; +}; + +static struct userfault_wait userfaultfd_get_blocking_state(unsigned int flags) { + /* + * If the fault has already been tried AND there's a signal pending + * for this task, use TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE with a small timeout. + * This prevents busy looping where schedule() otherwise does nothing + * for TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE when the task has a signal pending. + */ + if ((flags & FAULT_FLAG_TRIED) && signal_pending(current)) + return (struct userfault_wait) { TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE, true }; + if (flags & FAULT_FLAG_INTERRUPTIBLE) - return TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE; + return (struct userfault_wait) { TASK_INTERRUPTIBLE, false };
if (flags & FAULT_FLAG_KILLABLE) - return TASK_KILLABLE; + return (struct userfault_wait) { TASK_KILLABLE, false };
- return TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE; + return (struct userfault_wait) { TASK_UNINTERRUPTIBLE, false }; }
/* @@ -368,7 +382,7 @@ vm_fault_t handle_userfault(struct vm_fa struct userfaultfd_wait_queue uwq; vm_fault_t ret = VM_FAULT_SIGBUS; bool must_wait; - unsigned int blocking_state; + struct userfault_wait wait_mode;
/* * We don't do userfault handling for the final child pid update @@ -466,7 +480,7 @@ vm_fault_t handle_userfault(struct vm_fa uwq.ctx = ctx; uwq.waken = false;
- blocking_state = userfaultfd_get_blocking_state(vmf->flags); + wait_mode = userfaultfd_get_blocking_state(vmf->flags);
/* * Take the vma lock now, in order to safely call @@ -488,7 +502,7 @@ vm_fault_t handle_userfault(struct vm_fa * following the spin_unlock to happen before the list_add in * __add_wait_queue. */ - set_current_state(blocking_state); + set_current_state(wait_mode.task_state); spin_unlock_irq(&ctx->fault_pending_wqh.lock);
if (!is_vm_hugetlb_page(vma)) @@ -501,7 +515,11 @@ vm_fault_t handle_userfault(struct vm_fa
if (likely(must_wait && !READ_ONCE(ctx->released))) { wake_up_poll(&ctx->fd_wqh, EPOLLIN); - schedule(); + /* See comment in userfaultfd_get_blocking_state() */ + if (!wait_mode.timeout) + schedule(); + else + schedule_timeout(HZ / 10); }
__set_current_state(TASK_RUNNING); _
Patches currently in -mm which might be from axboe@kernel.dk are
mm-userfaultfd-prevent-busy-looping-for-tasks-with-signals-pending.patch