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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
commit1039bffd6ae9c75b42b7d148d6c1106134107b66 (patch)
treee8ee4ac80f87e2ad1b6b0c877eccbb62b0915c02 /Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces
downloadlinux-stable-1039bffd6ae9c75b42b7d148d6c1106134107b66.tar.gz
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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>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/compatibility-list.rst43
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/index.rst11
-rw-r--r--Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/resource-control.rst18
3 files changed, 72 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/compatibility-list.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/compatibility-list.rst
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+=============================
+Namespaces compatibility list
+=============================
+
+This document contains the information about the problems user
+may have when creating tasks living in different namespaces.
+
+Here's the summary. This matrix shows the known problems, that
+occur when tasks share some namespace (the columns) while living
+in different other namespaces (the rows):
+
+==== === === === === ==== ===
+- UTS IPC VFS PID User Net
+==== === === === === ==== ===
+UTS X
+IPC X 1
+VFS X
+PID 1 1 X
+User 2 2 X
+Net X
+==== === === === === ==== ===
+
+1. Both the IPC and the PID namespaces provide IDs to address
+ object inside the kernel. E.g. semaphore with IPCID or
+ process group with pid.
+
+ In both cases, tasks shouldn't try exposing this ID to some
+ other task living in a different namespace via a shared filesystem
+ or IPC shmem/message. The fact is that this ID is only valid
+ within the namespace it was obtained in and may refer to some
+ other object in another namespace.
+
+2. Intentionally, two equal user IDs in different user namespaces
+ should not be equal from the VFS point of view. In other
+ words, user 10 in one user namespace shouldn't have the same
+ access permissions to files, belonging to user 10 in another
+ namespace.
+
+ The same is true for the IPC namespaces being shared - two users
+ from different user namespaces should not access the same IPC objects
+ even having equal UIDs.
+
+ But currently this is not so.
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/index.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/index.rst
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+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+==========
+Namespaces
+==========
+
+.. toctree::
+ :maxdepth: 1
+
+ compatibility-list
+ resource-control
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/resource-control.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/namespaces/resource-control.rst
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+====================================
+User namespaces and resource control
+====================================
+
+The kernel contains many kinds of objects that either don't have
+individual limits or that have limits which are ineffective when
+a set of processes is allowed to switch their UID. On a system
+where the admins don't trust their users or their users' programs,
+user namespaces expose the system to potential misuse of resources.
+
+In order to mitigate this, we recommend that admins enable memory
+control groups on any system that enables user namespaces.
+Furthermore, we recommend that admins configure the memory control
+groups to limit the maximum memory usable by any untrusted user.
+
+Memory control groups can be configured by installing the libcgroup
+package present on most distros editing /etc/cgrules.conf,
+/etc/cgconfig.conf and setting up libpam-cgroup.