Re: [PATCH 2/2] mm,fork: introduce MADV_WIPEONFORK
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Date: 2017-08-15 22:51:18
Also in:
linux-mm, lkml
On Fri, 11 Aug 2017 17:28:29 -0400 riel@redhat.com wrote:
From: Rik van Riel <redacted> Introduce MADV_WIPEONFORK semantics, which result in a VMA being empty in the child process after fork. This differs from MADV_DONTFORK in one important way. If a child process accesses memory that was MADV_WIPEONFORK, it will get zeroes. The address ranges are still valid, they are just empty. If a child process accesses memory that was MADV_DONTFORK, it will get a segmentation fault, since those address ranges are no longer valid in the child after fork. Since MADV_DONTFORK also seems to be used to allow very large programs to fork in systems with strict memory overcommit restrictions, changing the semantics of MADV_DONTFORK might break existing programs. MADV_WIPEONFORK only works on private, anonymous VMAs. The use case is libraries that store or cache information, and want to know that they need to regenerate it in the child process after fork. Examples of this would be: - systemd/pulseaudio API checks (fail after fork) (replacing a getpid check, which is too slow without a PID cache) - PKCS#11 API reinitialization check (mandated by specification) - glibc's upcoming PRNG (reseed after fork) - OpenSSL PRNG (reseed after fork) The security benefits of a forking server having a re-inialized PRNG in every child process are pretty obvious. However, due to libraries having all kinds of internal state, and programs getting compiled with many different versions of each library, it is unreasonable to expect calling programs to re-initialize everything manually after fork. A further complication is the proliferation of clone flags, programs bypassing glibc's functions to call clone directly, and programs calling unshare, causing the glibc pthread_atfork hook to not get called. It would be better to have the kernel take care of this automatically.
I'll add "The patch also adds MADV_KEEPONFORK, to undo the effects of a prior MADV_WIPEONFORK." here. I guess it isn't worth mentioning that these things can cause VMA merges and splits.
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
--- a/mm/madvise.c +++ b/mm/madvise.c@@ -80,6 +80,17 @@ static long madvise_behavior(struct vm_area_struct *vma, } new_flags &= ~VM_DONTCOPY; break; + case MADV_WIPEONFORK: + /* MADV_WIPEONFORK is only supported on anonymous memory. */ + if (vma->vm_file || vma->vm_flags & VM_SHARED) { + error = -EINVAL; + goto out; + } + new_flags |= VM_WIPEONFORK; + break; + case MADV_KEEPONFORK: + new_flags &= ~VM_WIPEONFORK; + break; case MADV_DONTDUMP: new_flags |= VM_DONTDUMP; break;
It seems odd to permit MADV_KEEPONFORK against other-than-anon vmas? -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@kvack.org. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href=mailto:"dont@kvack.org"> email@kvack.org </a>