> On Jan 4, 2021, at 5:46 PM, Alexei Starovoitov <alexei.starovoi...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Dec 18, 2020 at 05:23:25PM +0000, Song Liu wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On Dec 18, 2020, at 8:38 AM, Yonghong Song <y...@fb.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12/17/20 9:23 PM, Alexei Starovoitov wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 8:33 PM Song Liu <songliubrav...@fb.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> ahh. I missed that. Makes sense.
>>>>>> vm_file needs to be accurate, but vm_area_struct should be accessed as
>>>>>> ptr_to_btf_id.
>>>>>
>>>>> Passing pointer of vm_area_struct into BPF will be tricky. For example,
>>>>> shall we
>>>>> allow the user to access vma->vm_file? IIUC, with ptr_to_btf_id the
>>>>> verifier will
>>>>> allow access of vma->vm_file as a valid pointer to struct file. However,
>>>>> since the
>>>>> vma might be freed, vma->vm_file could point to random data.
>>>> I don't think so. The proposed patch will do get_file() on it.
>>>> There is actually no need to assign it into a different variable.
>>>> Accessing it via vma->vm_file is safe and cleaner.
>>>
>>> I did not check the code but do you have scenarios where vma is freed but
>>> old vma->vm_file is not freed due to reference counting, but
>>> freed vma area is reused so vma->vm_file could be garbage?
>>
>> AFAIK, once we unlock mmap_sem, the vma could be freed and reused. I guess
>> ptr_to_btf_id
>> or probe_read would not help with this?
>
> Theoretically we can hack the verifier to treat some ptr_to_btf_id as "less
> valid" than the other ptr_to_btf_id, but the user experience will not be
> great.
> Reading such bpf prog will not be obvious. I think it's better to run bpf prog
> in mmap_lock then and let it access vma->vm_file. After prog finishes the iter
> bit can do if (mmap_lock_is_contended()) before iterating. That will deliver
> better performance too. Instead of task_vma_seq_get_next() doing
> mmap_lock/unlock at every vma. No need for get_file() either. And no
> __vm_area_struct exposure.
I think there might be concern calling BPF program with mmap_lock, especially
that
the program is sleepable (for bpf_d_path). It shouldn't be a problem for common
cases, but I am not 100% sure for corner cases (many instructions in BPF +
sleep).
Current version is designed to be very safe for the workload, which might be too
conservative.
Thanks,
Song
