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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 /tools/testing/memblock/README
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>
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+==================
+Memblock simulator
+==================
+
+Introduction
+============
+
+Memblock is a boot time memory allocator[1] that manages memory regions before
+the actual memory management is initialized. Its APIs allow to register physical
+memory regions, mark them as available or reserved, allocate a block of memory
+within the requested range and/or in specific NUMA node, and many more.
+
+Because it is used so early in the booting process, testing and debugging it is
+difficult. This test suite, usually referred as memblock simulator, is
+an attempt at testing the memblock mechanism. It runs one monolithic test that
+consist of a series of checks that exercise both the basic operations and
+allocation functionalities of memblock. The main data structure of the boot time
+memory allocator is initialized at the build time, so the checks here reuse its
+instance throughout the duration of the test. To ensure that tests don't affect
+each other, region arrays are reset in between.
+
+As this project uses the actual memblock code and has to run in user space,
+some of the kernel definitions were stubbed by the initial commit that
+introduced memblock simulator (commit 16802e55dea9 ("memblock tests: Add
+skeleton of the memblock simulator")) and a few preparation commits just
+before it. Most of them don't match the kernel implementation, so one should
+consult them first before making any significant changes to the project.
+
+Usage
+=====
+
+To run the tests, build the main target and run it:
+
+$ make && ./main
+
+A successful run produces no output. It is possible to control the behavior
+by passing options from command line. For example, to include verbose output,
+append the `-v` options when you run the tests:
+
+$ ./main -v
+
+This will print information about which functions are being tested and the
+number of test cases that passed.
+
+For the full list of options from command line, see `./main --help`.
+
+It is also possible to override different configuration parameters to change
+the test functions. For example, to simulate enabled NUMA, use:
+
+$ make NUMA=1
+
+For the full list of build options, see `make help`.
+
+Project structure
+=================
+
+The project has one target, main, which calls a group of checks for basic and
+allocation functions. Tests for each group are defined in dedicated files, as it
+can be seen here:
+
+memblock
+|-- asm ------------------,
+|-- lib |-- implement function and struct stubs
+|-- linux ------------------'
+|-- scripts
+| |-- Makefile.include -- handles `make` parameters
+|-- tests
+| |-- alloc_api.(c|h) -- memblock_alloc tests
+| |-- alloc_helpers_api.(c|h) -- memblock_alloc_from tests
+| |-- alloc_nid_api.(c|h) -- memblock_alloc_try_nid tests
+| |-- basic_api.(c|h) -- memblock_add/memblock_reserve/... tests
+| |-- common.(c|h) -- helper functions for resetting memblock;
+|-- main.c --------------. dummy physical memory definition
+|-- Makefile `- test runner
+|-- README
+|-- TODO
+|-- .gitignore
+
+Simulating physical memory
+==========================
+
+Some allocation functions clear the memory in the process, so it is required for
+memblock to track valid memory ranges. To achieve this, the test suite registers
+with memblock memory stored by test_memory struct. It is a small wrapper that
+points to a block of memory allocated via malloc. For each group of allocation
+tests, dummy physical memory is allocated, added to memblock, and then released
+at the end of the test run. The structure of a test runner checking allocation
+functions is as follows:
+
+int memblock_alloc_foo_checks(void)
+{
+ reset_memblock_attributes(); /* data structure reset */
+ dummy_physical_memory_init(); /* allocate and register memory */
+
+ (...allocation checks...)
+
+ dummy_physical_memory_cleanup(); /* free the memory */
+}
+
+There's no need to explicitly free the dummy memory from memblock via
+memblock_free() call. The entry will be erased by reset_memblock_regions(),
+called at the beginning of each test.
+
+Known issues
+============
+
+1. Tests for memblock_alloc_low() can't be easily implemented. The function uses
+ ARCH_LOW_ADDRESS_LIMIT marco, which can't be changed to point at the low
+ memory of the memory_block.
+
+References
+==========
+
+1. Boot time memory management documentation page:
+ https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/core-api/boot-time-mm.html