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authorXie Yuanbin <xieyuanbin1@huawei.com>2026-07-28 03:16:42 +0100
committerRussell King <rmk+kernel@armlinux.org.uk>2026-08-05 16:15:51 +0100
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treee8ee4ac80f87e2ad1b6b0c877eccbb62b0915c02 /Documentation/admin-guide/cpu-load.rst
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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>
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+========
+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