The patch titled Subject: mm: fix lazy mmu docs and usage has been added to the -mm mm-unstable branch. Its filename is mm-fix-lazy-mmu-docs-and-usage.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-unstable branch at git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm
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------------------------------------------------------ From: Ryan Roberts ryan.roberts@arm.com Subject: mm: fix lazy mmu docs and usage Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2025 14:15:35 +0000
Patch series "Fix lazy mmu mode", v2.
I'm planning to implement lazy mmu mode for arm64 to optimize vmalloc. As part of that, I will extend lazy mmu mode to cover kernel mappings in vmalloc table walkers. While lazy mmu mode is already used for kernel mappings in a few places, this will extend it's use significantly.
Having reviewed the existing lazy mmu implementations in powerpc, sparc and x86, it looks like there are a bunch of bugs, some of which may be more likely to trigger once I extend the use of lazy mmu. So this series attempts to clarify the requirements and fix all the bugs in advance of that series. See patch #1 commit log for all the details.
This patch (of 5):
The docs, implementations and use of arch_[enter|leave]_lazy_mmu_mode() is a bit of a mess (to put it politely). There are a number of issues related to nesting of lazy mmu regions and confusion over whether the task, when in a lazy mmu region, is preemptible or not. Fix all the issues relating to the core-mm. Follow up commits will fix the arch-specific implementations. 3 arches implement lazy mmu; powerpc, sparc and x86.
When arch_[enter|leave]_lazy_mmu_mode() was first introduced by commit 6606c3e0da53 ("[PATCH] paravirt: lazy mmu mode hooks.patch"), it was expected that lazy mmu regions would never nest and that the appropriate page table lock(s) would be held while in the region, thus ensuring the region is non-preemptible. Additionally lazy mmu regions were only used during manipulation of user mappings.
Commit 38e0edb15bd0 ("mm/apply_to_range: call pte function with lazy updates") started invoking the lazy mmu mode in apply_to_pte_range(), which is used for both user and kernel mappings. For kernel mappings the region is no longer protected by any lock so there is no longer any guarantee about non-preemptibility. Additionally, for RT configs, the holding the PTL only implies no CPU migration, it doesn't prevent preemption.
Commit bcc6cc832573 ("mm: add default definition of set_ptes()") added arch_[enter|leave]_lazy_mmu_mode() to the default implementation of set_ptes(), used by x86. So after this commit, lazy mmu regions can be nested. Additionally commit 1a10a44dfc1d ("sparc64: implement the new page table range API") and commit 9fee28baa601 ("powerpc: implement the new page table range API") did the same for the sparc and powerpc set_ptes() overrides.
powerpc couldn't deal with preemption so avoids it in commit b9ef323ea168 ("powerpc/64s: Disable preemption in hash lazy mmu mode"), which explicitly disables preemption for the whole region in its implementation. x86 can support preemption (or at least it could until it tried to add support nesting; more on this below). Sparc looks to be totally broken in the face of preemption, as far as I can tell.
powerpc can't deal with nesting, so avoids it in commit 47b8def9358c ("powerpc/mm: Avoid calling arch_enter/leave_lazy_mmu() in set_ptes"), which removes the lazy mmu calls from its implementation of set_ptes(). x86 attempted to support nesting in commit 49147beb0ccb ("x86/xen: allow nesting of same lazy mode") but as far as I can tell, this breaks its support for preemption.
In short, it's all a mess; the semantics for arch_[enter|leave]_lazy_mmu_mode() are not clearly defined and as a result the implementations all have different expectations, sticking plasters and bugs.
arm64 is aiming to start using these hooks, so let's clean everything up before adding an arm64 implementation. Update the documentation to state that lazy mmu regions can never be nested, must not be called in interrupt context and preemption may or may not be enabled for the duration of the region. And fix the generic implementation of set_ptes() to avoid nesting.
arch-specific fixes to conform to the new spec will proceed this one.
These issues were spotted by code review and I have no evidence of issues being reported in the wild.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250303141542.3371656-1-ryan.roberts@arm.com Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250303141542.3371656-2-ryan.roberts@arm.com Fixes: bcc6cc832573 ("mm: add default definition of set_ptes()") Signed-off-by: Ryan Roberts ryan.roberts@arm.com Acked-by: David Hildenbrand david@redhat.com Cc: Andreas Larsson andreas@gaisler.com Cc: Borislav Betkov bp@alien8.de Cc: Boris Ostrovsky boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com Cc: Catalin Marinas catalin.marinas@arm.com Cc: Dave Hansen dave.hansen@linux.intel.com Cc: David S. Miller davem@davemloft.net Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" hpa@zytor.com Cc: Ingo Molnar mingo@redhat.com Cc: Juegren Gross jgross@suse.com Cc: Matthew Wilcow (Oracle) willy@infradead.org Cc: Thomas Gleinxer tglx@linutronix.de Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton akpm@linux-foundation.org ---
include/linux/pgtable.h | 14 ++++++++------ 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
--- a/include/linux/pgtable.h~mm-fix-lazy-mmu-docs-and-usage +++ a/include/linux/pgtable.h @@ -222,10 +222,14 @@ static inline int pmd_dirty(pmd_t pmd) * hazard could result in the direct mode hypervisor case, since the actual * write to the page tables may not yet have taken place, so reads though * a raw PTE pointer after it has been modified are not guaranteed to be - * up to date. This mode can only be entered and left under the protection of - * the page table locks for all page tables which may be modified. In the UP - * case, this is required so that preemption is disabled, and in the SMP case, - * it must synchronize the delayed page table writes properly on other CPUs. + * up to date. + * + * In the general case, no lock is guaranteed to be held between entry and exit + * of the lazy mode. So the implementation must assume preemption may be enabled + * and cpu migration is possible; it must take steps to be robust against this. + * (In practice, for user PTE updates, the appropriate page table lock(s) are + * held, but for kernel PTE updates, no lock is held). Nesting is not permitted + * and the mode cannot be used in interrupt context. */ #ifndef __HAVE_ARCH_ENTER_LAZY_MMU_MODE #define arch_enter_lazy_mmu_mode() do {} while (0) @@ -287,7 +291,6 @@ static inline void set_ptes(struct mm_st { page_table_check_ptes_set(mm, ptep, pte, nr);
- arch_enter_lazy_mmu_mode(); for (;;) { set_pte(ptep, pte); if (--nr == 0) @@ -295,7 +298,6 @@ static inline void set_ptes(struct mm_st ptep++; pte = pte_next_pfn(pte); } - arch_leave_lazy_mmu_mode(); } #endif #define set_pte_at(mm, addr, ptep, pte) set_ptes(mm, addr, ptep, pte, 1) _
Patches currently in -mm which might be from ryan.roberts@arm.com are
mm-dont-skip-arch_sync_kernel_mappings-in-error-paths.patch mm-ioremap-pass-pgprot_t-to-ioremap_prot-instead-of-unsigned-long.patch mm-fix-lazy-mmu-docs-and-usage.patch fs-proc-task_mmu-reduce-scope-of-lazy-mmu-region.patch sparc-mm-disable-preemption-in-lazy-mmu-mode.patch sparc-mm-avoid-calling-arch_enter-leave_lazy_mmu-in-set_ptes.patch revert-x86-xen-allow-nesting-of-same-lazy-mode.patch