diff mbox series

mm, slub: restore the original intention of prefetch_freepointer()

Message ID 20180809085245.22448-1-vbabka@suse.cz (mailing list archive)
State New, archived
Headers show
Series mm, slub: restore the original intention of prefetch_freepointer() | expand

Commit Message

Vlastimil Babka Aug. 9, 2018, 8:52 a.m. UTC
In SLUB, prefetch_freepointer() is used when allocating an object from cache's
freelist, to make sure the next object in the list is cache-hot, since it's
probable it will be allocated soon.

Commit 2482ddec670f ("mm: add SLUB free list pointer obfuscation") has
unintentionally changed the prefetch in a way where the prefetch is turned to a
real fetch, and only the next->next pointer is prefetched. In case there is not
a stream of allocations that would benefit from prefetching, the extra real
fetch might add a useless cache miss to the allocation. Restore the previous
behavior.

Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
Cc: Daniel Micay <danielmicay@gmail.com>
Cc: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
---
While I don't expect this to be causing the bug at hand, it's worth fixing.
For the bug it might mean that the page fault moves elsewhere.

 mm/slub.c | 3 +--
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-)

Comments

Kees Cook Aug. 14, 2018, 12:03 a.m. UTC | #1
On Thu, Aug 9, 2018 at 1:52 AM, Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz> wrote:
> In SLUB, prefetch_freepointer() is used when allocating an object from cache's
> freelist, to make sure the next object in the list is cache-hot, since it's
> probable it will be allocated soon.
>
> Commit 2482ddec670f ("mm: add SLUB free list pointer obfuscation") has
> unintentionally changed the prefetch in a way where the prefetch is turned to a
> real fetch, and only the next->next pointer is prefetched. In case there is not
> a stream of allocations that would benefit from prefetching, the extra real
> fetch might add a useless cache miss to the allocation. Restore the previous
> behavior.
>
> Signed-off-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@suse.cz>
> Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>
> Cc: Daniel Micay <danielmicay@gmail.com>
> Cc: Eric Dumazet <edumazet@google.com>
> Cc: Christoph Lameter <cl@linux.com>
> Cc: Pekka Enberg <penberg@kernel.org>
> Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
> Cc: Joonsoo Kim <iamjoonsoo.kim@lge.com>
> ---
> While I don't expect this to be causing the bug at hand, it's worth fixing.
> For the bug it might mean that the page fault moves elsewhere.
>
>  mm/slub.c | 3 +--
>  1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
> index 51258eff4178..ce2b9e5cea77 100644
> --- a/mm/slub.c
> +++ b/mm/slub.c
> @@ -271,8 +271,7 @@ static inline void *get_freepointer(struct kmem_cache *s, void *object)
>
>  static void prefetch_freepointer(const struct kmem_cache *s, void *object)
>  {
> -       if (object)
> -               prefetch(freelist_dereference(s, object + s->offset));
> +       prefetch(object + s->offset);

Ah -- gotcha. I think I misunderstood the purpose here. You're not
prefetching what is being pointed at, you're literally prefetching
what is stored there. That wouldn't require dereferencing the freelist
pointer, no.

Thanks!

Acked-by: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org>

>  }
>
>  static inline void *get_freepointer_safe(struct kmem_cache *s, void *object)
> --
> 2.18.0
>
diff mbox series

Patch

diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
index 51258eff4178..ce2b9e5cea77 100644
--- a/mm/slub.c
+++ b/mm/slub.c
@@ -271,8 +271,7 @@  static inline void *get_freepointer(struct kmem_cache *s, void *object)
 
 static void prefetch_freepointer(const struct kmem_cache *s, void *object)
 {
-	if (object)
-		prefetch(freelist_dereference(s, object + s->offset));
+	prefetch(object + s->offset);
 }
 
 static inline void *get_freepointer_safe(struct kmem_cache *s, void *object)