The quilt patch titled Subject: mm: close theoretical race where stale TLB entries could linger has been removed from the -mm tree. Its filename was mm-close-theoretical-race-where-stale-tlb-entries-could-linger.patch
This patch was dropped because it was merged into the mm-hotfixes-stable branch of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/akpm/mm
------------------------------------------------------ From: Ryan Roberts ryan.roberts@arm.com Subject: mm: close theoretical race where stale TLB entries could linger Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2025 10:28:07 +0100
Commit 3ea277194daa ("mm, mprotect: flush TLB if potentially racing with a parallel reclaim leaving stale TLB entries") described a theoretical race as such:
""" Nadav Amit identified a theoretical race between page reclaim and mprotect due to TLB flushes being batched outside of the PTL being held.
He described the race as follows:
CPU0 CPU1 ---- ---- user accesses memory using RW PTE [PTE now cached in TLB] try_to_unmap_one() ==> ptep_get_and_clear() ==> set_tlb_ubc_flush_pending() mprotect(addr, PROT_READ) ==> change_pte_range() ==> [ PTE non-present - no flush ]
user writes using cached RW PTE ...
try_to_unmap_flush()
The same type of race exists for reads when protecting for PROT_NONE and also exists for operations that can leave an old TLB entry behind such as munmap, mremap and madvise. """
The solution was to introduce flush_tlb_batched_pending() and call it under the PTL from mprotect/madvise/munmap/mremap to complete any pending tlb flushes.
However, while madvise_free_pte_range() and madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_range() were both retro-fitted to call flush_tlb_batched_pending() immediately after initially acquiring the PTL, they both temporarily release the PTL to split a large folio if they stumble upon one. In this case, where re-acquiring the PTL flush_tlb_batched_pending() must be called again, but it previously was not. Let's fix that.
There are 2 Fixes: tags here: the first is the commit that fixed madvise_free_pte_range(). The second is the commit that added madvise_cold_or_pageout_pte_range(), which looks like it copy/pasted the faulty pattern from madvise_free_pte_range().
This is a theoretical bug discovered during code review.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20250606092809.4194056-1-ryan.roberts@arm.com Fixes: 3ea277194daa ("mm, mprotect: flush TLB if potentially racing with a parallel reclaim leaving stale TLB entries") Fixes: 9c276cc65a58 ("mm: introduce MADV_COLD") Signed-off-by: Ryan Roberts ryan.roberts@arm.com Reviewed-by: Jann Horn jannh@google.com Acked-by: David Hildenbrand david@redhat.com Cc: Liam Howlett liam.howlett@oracle.com Cc: Lorenzo Stoakes lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com Cc: Mel Gorman <mgorman mgorman@suse.de Cc: Vlastimil Babka vbabka@suse.cz Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton akpm@linux-foundation.org ---
mm/madvise.c | 2 ++ 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+)
--- a/mm/madvise.c~mm-close-theoretical-race-where-stale-tlb-entries-could-linger +++ a/mm/madvise.c @@ -508,6 +508,7 @@ restart: pte_offset_map_lock(mm, pmd, addr, &ptl); if (!start_pte) break; + flush_tlb_batched_pending(mm); arch_enter_lazy_mmu_mode(); if (!err) nr = 0; @@ -741,6 +742,7 @@ static int madvise_free_pte_range(pmd_t start_pte = pte; if (!start_pte) break; + flush_tlb_batched_pending(mm); arch_enter_lazy_mmu_mode(); if (!err) nr = 0; _
Patches currently in -mm which might be from ryan.roberts@arm.com are
mm-readahead-honour-new_order-in-page_cache_ra_order.patch mm-readahead-terminate-async-readahead-on-natural-boundary.patch mm-readahead-make-space-in-struct-file_ra_state.patch mm-readahead-store-folio-order-in-struct-file_ra_state.patch mm-filemap-allow-arch-to-request-folio-size-for-exec-memory.patch mm-remove-arch_flush_tlb_batched_pending-arch-helper.patch