linux/fs/proc
Lorenzo Stoakes 5dba5cc2e0 mm: introduce VM_MAYBE_GUARD and make visible in /proc/$pid/smaps
Patch series "introduce VM_MAYBE_GUARD and make it sticky", v4.

Currently, guard regions are not visible to users except through
/proc/$pid/pagemap, with no explicit visibility at the VMA level.

This makes the feature less useful, as it isn't entirely apparent which
VMAs may have these entries present, especially when performing actions
which walk through memory regions such as those performed by CRIU.

This series addresses this issue by introducing the VM_MAYBE_GUARD flag
which fulfils this role, updating the smaps logic to display an entry for
these.

The semantics of this flag are that a guard region MAY be present if set
(we cannot be sure, as we can't efficiently track whether an
MADV_GUARD_REMOVE finally removes all the guard regions in a VMA) - but if
not set the VMA definitely does NOT have any guard regions present.

It's problematic to establish this flag without further action, because
that means that VMAs with guard regions in them become non-mergeable with
adjacent VMAs for no especially good reason.

To work around this, this series also introduces the concept of 'sticky'
VMA flags - that is flags which:

a. if set in one VMA and not in another still permit those VMAs to be
   merged (if otherwise compatible).

b. When they are merged, the resultant VMA must have the flag set.

The VMA logic is updated to propagate these flags correctly.

Additionally, VM_MAYBE_GUARD being an explicit VMA flag allows us to solve
an issue with file-backed guard regions - previously these established an
anon_vma object for file-backed mappings solely to have vma_needs_copy()
correctly propagate guard region mappings to child processes.

We introduce a new flag alias VM_COPY_ON_FORK (which currently only
specifies VM_MAYBE_GUARD) and update vma_needs_copy() to check explicitly
for this flag and to copy page tables if it is present, which resolves
this issue.

Additionally, we add the ability for allow-listed VMA flags to be
atomically writable with only mmap/VMA read locks held.

The only flag we allow so far is VM_MAYBE_GUARD, which we carefully ensure
does not cause any races by being allowed to do so.

This allows us to maintain guard region installation as a read-locked
operation and not endure the overhead of obtaining a write lock here.

Finally we introduce extensive VMA userland tests to assert that the
sticky VMA logic behaves correctly as well as guard region self tests to
assert that smaps visibility is correctly implemented.


This patch (of 9):

Currently, if a user needs to determine if guard regions are present in a
range, they have to scan all VMAs (or have knowledge of which ones might
have guard regions).

Since commit 8e2f2aeb8b ("fs/proc/task_mmu: add guard region bit to
pagemap") and the related commit a516403787 ("fs/proc: extend the
PAGEMAP_SCAN ioctl to report guard regions"), users can use either
/proc/$pid/pagemap or the PAGEMAP_SCAN functionality to perform this
operation at a virtual address level.

This is not ideal, and it gives no visibility at a /proc/$pid/smaps level
that guard regions exist in ranges.

This patch remedies the situation by establishing a new VMA flag,
VM_MAYBE_GUARD, to indicate that a VMA may contain guard regions (it is
uncertain because we cannot reasonably determine whether a
MADV_GUARD_REMOVE call has removed all of the guard regions in a VMA, and
additionally VMAs may change across merge/split).

We utilise 0x800 for this flag which makes it available to 32-bit
architectures also, a flag that was previously used by VM_DENYWRITE, which
was removed in commit 8d0920bde5 ("mm: remove VM_DENYWRITE") and hasn't
bee reused yet.

We also update the smaps logic and documentation to identify these VMAs.

Another major use of this functionality is that we can use it to identify
that we ought to copy page tables on fork.

We do not actually implement usage of this flag in mm/madvise.c yet as we
need to allow some VMA flags to be applied atomically under mmap/VMA read
lock in order to avoid the need to acquire a write lock for this purpose.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/cover.1763460113.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/cf8ef821eba29b6c5b5e138fffe95d6dcabdedb9.1763460113.git.lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com
Signed-off-by: Lorenzo Stoakes <lorenzo.stoakes@oracle.com>
Reviewed-by: Pedro Falcato <pfalcato@suse.de>
Reviewed-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Acked-by: David Hildenbrand (Red Hat) <david@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Lance Yang <lance.yang@linux.dev>
Cc: Andrei Vagin <avagin@gmail.com>
Cc: Baolin Wang <baolin.wang@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: Barry Song <baohua@kernel.org>
Cc: Dev Jain <dev.jain@arm.com>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Liam Howlett <liam.howlett@oracle.com>
Cc: "Masami Hiramatsu (Google)" <mhiramat@kernel.org>
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>
Cc: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.com>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <rppt@kernel.org>
Cc: Nico Pache <npache@redhat.com>
Cc: Ryan Roberts <ryan.roberts@arm.com>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Suren Baghdasaryan <surenb@google.com>
Cc: Zi Yan <ziy@nvidia.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
History 2025-11-20 13:43:58 -08:00
..
array.c Summary of significant series in this pull request: 2025-10-02 18:18:33 -07:00
base.c Patch series in this pull request: 2025-10-02 18:44:54 -07:00
bootconfig.c fs/proc: Skip bootloader comment if no embedded kernel parameters 2024-04-09 23:36:18 +09:00
cmdline.c proc: mark /proc/cmdline as permanent 2023-02-02 22:50:02 -08:00
consoles.c proc: Add nbcon support for /proc/consoles 2024-09-04 15:56:33 +02:00
cpuinfo.c x86/aperfmperf: Replace aperfmperf_get_khz() 2022-04-27 20:22:19 +02:00
devices.c proc: mark more files as permanent 2022-10-03 14:21:45 -07:00
fd.c proc_fd_getattr(): don't bother with S_ISDIR() check 2025-06-16 16:21:07 +02:00
fd.h fs: port ->permission() to pass mnt_idmap 2023-01-19 09:24:28 +01:00
generic.c fs/proc: fix uaf in proc_readdir_de() 2025-11-09 21:19:43 -08:00
inode.c mm: consistently use current->mm in mm_get_unmapped_area() 2025-11-16 17:27:57 -08:00
internal.h fs/proc/task_mmu: factor out proc_maps_private fields used by PROCMAP_QUERY 2025-09-13 16:54:48 -07:00
interrupts.c fs/procfs: Switch to irq_get_nr_irqs() 2024-10-16 21:56:59 +02:00
Kconfig virtio-mem: support CONFIG_PROC_VMCORE_DEVICE_RAM 2025-01-27 09:39:25 -05:00
kcore.c crash: Use note name macros 2025-02-10 16:56:58 -08:00
kmsg.c printk changes for 6.1 2022-10-10 11:24:19 -07:00
loadavg.c proc: mark more files as permanent 2022-10-03 14:21:45 -07:00
Makefile kbuild: make -Woverride-init warnings more consistent 2024-03-31 11:32:26 +09:00
meminfo.c mm, vmstat: remove the NR_WRITEBACK_TEMP node_stat_item counter 2025-07-19 18:59:47 -07:00
namespaces.c fs/proc/namespaces: make ns_entries const 2025-09-15 14:28:37 +02:00
nommu.c fs: create helper file_user_path() for user displayed mapped file path 2023-10-19 11:03:15 +02:00
page.c mm/hwpoison: decouple hwpoison_filter from mm/memory-failure.c 2025-09-21 14:22:21 -07:00
proc_net.c fs: Add kernel-doc comments to proc_create_net_data_write() 2024-03-26 09:01:18 +01:00
proc_sysctl.c Current exclusion rules for ->d_flags stores are rather unpleasant. 2025-07-28 09:17:57 -07:00
proc_tty.c proc: delete unused <linux/uaccess.h> includes 2022-07-17 17:31:39 -07:00
root.c namespace-6.18-rc1 2025-09-29 11:20:29 -07:00
self.c proc: convert to new timestamp accessors 2023-10-18 14:08:26 +02:00
softirqs.c proc/softirqs: replace seq_printf with seq_put_decimal_ull_width 2024-11-07 07:40:14 -10:00
stat.c fs/procfs: Switch to irq_get_nr_irqs() 2024-10-16 21:56:59 +02:00
task_mmu.c mm: introduce VM_MAYBE_GUARD and make visible in /proc/$pid/smaps 2025-11-20 13:43:58 -08:00
task_nommu.c fs/proc/task_mmu: factor out proc_maps_private fields used by PROCMAP_QUERY 2025-09-13 16:54:48 -07:00
thread_self.c proc: convert to new timestamp accessors 2023-10-18 14:08:26 +02:00
uptime.c proc: mark more files as permanent 2022-10-03 14:21:45 -07:00
util.c fs/proc/util.c: include fs/proc/internal.h for name_to_int() 2019-01-04 13:13:45 -08:00
version.c proc: mark more files as permanent 2022-10-03 14:21:45 -07:00
vmcore.c fs/proc/vmcore: a few cleanups for vmcore_add_device_dump() 2025-07-09 22:57:56 -07:00