Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] xen/balloon: flush unused mappings before updating P2M table

[David Vrabel <david.vrabel@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 14/03/14 18:27, Wei Liu wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 14, 2014 at 06:05:50PM +0000, David Vrabel wrote:
>> On 14/03/14 16:21, Wei Liu wrote:
>>> Xen balloon driver will update ballooned out pages' P2M entries to point
>>> to scratch page for PV guests. In 24f69373e2 ("xen/balloon: don't alloc
>>> page while non-preemptible", kmap_flush_unused was moved after the
>>> update for P2M table. In that case for 32 bit PV guest we might end up
>>> with
>>>
>>> P2M    X -----> scratch_page
>>> M2P    Y -----> X  (Y is mfn in unused kmap entry)
>>>
>>> When PVMMU is consulted, it gets confused and returns the wrong value.
>>> Eventually the guest crashes.
>>>
>>> Move the flush before __set_phys_to_machine to fix this.
>>
>> The scrub_page() will immediately repopulate the kmap cache with the MFN
>> about to be returned to Xen so this isn't the correct place.
>>
> 
> If XEN_SCRUB_PAGE is not set then scrub_page is a nop. Even if
> XEN_SCRUB_PAGE is set, the call to clear_highpage affects per-cpu kmap
> not persisten kmap. kmap_flush_unused affects persistent kmap.
> 
>> I don't understand your description of the problem so I cannot suggest a
>> correct fix.  What's consulting what?
>>
> 
> kmap_flush_unused consults PVMMU. It goes through all global kmap slots
> and try to clear those unused ones. It calls flush_all_zero_pkmaps which
> calls pte_page, which eventually goes to PVMMU.

Ok, that's a real bug then.  The P2M cannot be changed if there are
still mappings for that PFN.

David

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