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| author | Xie Yuanbin <xieyuanbin1@huawei.com> | 2026-07-28 03:16:42 +0100 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Russell King <rmk+kernel@armlinux.org.uk> | 2026-08-05 16:15:51 +0100 |
| commit | 1039bffd6ae9c75b42b7d148d6c1106134107b66 (patch) | |
| tree | e8ee4ac80f87e2ad1b6b0c877eccbb62b0915c02 /Documentation/admin-guide/cpu-load.rst | |
| download | linux-stable-1039bffd6ae9c75b42b7d148d6c1106134107b66.tar.gz linux-stable-1039bffd6ae9c75b42b7d148d6c1106134107b66.zip | |
ARM: 9485/1: mm: acquire mmap write lock around show_pte() for user faultsgrafted
When CONFIG_DEBUG_USER=y, and cmdline "user_debug=31" is set,
a user fault may trigger show_pte() without any lock.
If another thread in the same process concurrently calls munmap(),
the page table pages may be freed while show_pte() is still traversing
them, causing a use-after-free in show_pte().
If CONFIG_ARM_LPAE=y, this may cause a kernel panic if the pages table
of PMD are freed when show_pte() is running.
Acquire mmap_write_lock() around show_pte() for user faults to fix the
contention.
For user faults, additionally restrict that show_pte() is called only
when the addr is a user-space address (addr < TASK_SIZE). This is because
the lock of tsk->mm only protects the virtual memory of user address space,
furthermore, dumping the page tables of a kernel-space address for user
faults is unnecessary and may have security implications.
Keep everything unchanged for kernel faults, because the kernel is
already in the "oops" state, acquiring a lock may risk a deadlock.
Co-developed-by: Qi Xi <xiqi2@huawei.com>
Fixes: 6d021b724481 ("ARM: dump pgd, pmd and pte states on unhandled data abort faults")
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/20260716014022.2823-1-xieyuanbin1@huawei.com
Acked-by: Lorenzo Stoakes (ARM) <ljs@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Linus Walleij <linusw@kernel.org>
Signed-off-by: Qi Xi <xiqi2@huawei.com>
Signed-off-by: Xie Yuanbin <xieyuanbin1@huawei.com>
Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@armlinux.org.uk>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/cpu-load.rst')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/cpu-load.rst | 117 |
1 files changed, 117 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/cpu-load.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/cpu-load.rst new file mode 100644 index 000000000..21a984337 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/cpu-load.rst @@ -0,0 +1,117 @@ +======== +CPU load +======== + +Linux exports various bits of information via ``/proc/stat`` and +``/proc/uptime`` that userland tools, such as top(1), use to calculate +the average time system spent in a particular state, for example:: + + $ iostat + Linux 2.6.18.3-exp (linmac) 02/20/2007 + + avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle + 10.01 0.00 2.92 5.44 0.00 81.63 + + ... + +Here the system thinks that over the default sampling period the +system spent 10.01% of the time doing work in user space, 2.92% in the +kernel, and was overall 81.63% of the time idle. + +In most cases the ``/proc/stat`` information reflects the reality quite +closely, however due to the nature of how/when the kernel collects +this data sometimes it can not be trusted at all. + +So how is this information collected? Whenever timer interrupt is +signalled the kernel looks what kind of task was running at this +moment and increments the counter that corresponds to this tasks +kind/state. The problem with this is that the system could have +switched between various states multiple times between two timer +interrupts yet the counter is incremented only for the last state. + + +Example +------- + +If we imagine the system with one task that periodically burns cycles +in the following manner:: + + time line between two timer interrupts + |--------------------------------------| + ^ ^ + |_ something begins working | + |_ something goes to sleep + (only to be awaken quite soon) + +In the above situation the system will be 0% loaded according to the +``/proc/stat`` (since the timer interrupt will always happen when the +system is executing the idle handler), but in reality the load is +closer to 99%. + +One can imagine many more situations where this behavior of the kernel +will lead to quite erratic information inside ``/proc/stat``:: + + + /* gcc -o hog smallhog.c */ + #include <time.h> + #include <limits.h> + #include <signal.h> + #include <sys/time.h> + #define HIST 10 + + static volatile sig_atomic_t stop; + + static void sighandler(int signr) + { + (void) signr; + stop = 1; + } + + static unsigned long hog (unsigned long niters) + { + stop = 0; + while (!stop && --niters); + return niters; + } + + int main (void) + { + int i; + struct itimerval it = { + .it_interval = { .tv_sec = 0, .tv_usec = 1 }, + .it_value = { .tv_sec = 0, .tv_usec = 1 } }; + sigset_t set; + unsigned long v[HIST]; + double tmp = 0.0; + unsigned long n; + signal(SIGALRM, &sighandler); + setitimer(ITIMER_REAL, &it, NULL); + + hog (ULONG_MAX); + for (i = 0; i < HIST; ++i) v[i] = ULONG_MAX - hog(ULONG_MAX); + for (i = 0; i < HIST; ++i) tmp += v[i]; + tmp /= HIST; + n = tmp - (tmp / 3.0); + + sigemptyset(&set); + sigaddset(&set, SIGALRM); + + for (;;) { + hog(n); + sigwait(&set, &i); + } + return 0; + } + + +References +---------- + +- https://lore.kernel.org/r/loom.20070212T063225-663@post.gmane.org +- Documentation/filesystems/proc.rst (1.8) + + +Thanks +------ + +Con Kolivas, Pavel Machek |
