Re: [PATCH 1/1] mm/thp: fix MTE tag mismatch when replacing zero-filled subpages
From: Lance Yang <lance.yang@linux.dev>
Date: 2025-09-24 02:49:49
Also in:
linux-mediatek, linux-mm, lkml, stable
On 2025/9/24 00:14, Catalin Marinas wrote:
On Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 12:52:06PM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:quoted
I just realised that on arm64 with MTE we won't get any merging with the zero page even if the user page isn't mapped with PROT_MTE. In cpu_enable_mte() we zero the tags in the zero page and set PG_mte_tagged. The reason is that we want to use the zero page with PROT_MTE mappings (until tag setting causes CoW). Hmm, the arm64 memcmp_pages() messed up KSM merging with the zero page even before this patch.[...]quoted
diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c b/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c index e5e773844889..72a1dfc54659 100644 --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/mte.c@@ -73,6 +73,8 @@ int memcmp_pages(struct page *page1, struct page *page2) { char *addr1, *addr2; int ret; + bool page1_tagged = page_mte_tagged(page1) && !is_zero_page(page1); + bool page2_tagged = page_mte_tagged(page2) && !is_zero_page(page2); addr1 = page_address(page1); addr2 = page_address(page2);@@ -83,11 +85,10 @@ int memcmp_pages(struct page *page1, struct page *page2) /* * If the page content is identical but at least one of the pages is - * tagged, return non-zero to avoid KSM merging. If only one of the - * pages is tagged, __set_ptes() may zero or change the tags of the - * other page via mte_sync_tags(). + * tagged, return non-zero to avoid KSM merging. Ignore the zero page + * since it is always tagged with the tags cleared. */ - if (page_mte_tagged(page1) || page_mte_tagged(page2)) + if (page1_tagged || page2_tagged) return addr1 != addr2; return ret;Unrelated to this discussion, I got an internal report that Linux hangs during boot with CONFIG_DEFERRED_STRUCT_PAGE_INIT because try_page_mte_tagging() locks up on uninitialised page flags. Since we (always?) map the zero page as pte_special(), set_pte_at() won't check if the tags have to be initialised, so we can skip the PG_mte_tagged altogether. We actually had this code for some time until we introduced the pte_special() check in set_pte_at(). So alternative patch that also fixes the deferred struct page init (on the assumptions that the zero page is always mapped as pte_special():
I can confirm that this alternative patch also works correctly; my tests for MTE all pass ;) This looks like a better fix since it solves the boot hang issue too.
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/cpufeature.c b/arch/arm64/kernel/cpufeature.c index 7b78c95a9017..e325ba34f45c 100644 --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/cpufeature.c +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/cpufeature.c@@ -2419,17 +2419,21 @@ static void bti_enable(const struct arm64_cpu_capabilities *__unused) #ifdef CONFIG_ARM64_MTE static void cpu_enable_mte(struct arm64_cpu_capabilities const *cap) { + static bool cleared_zero_page = false; + sysreg_clear_set(sctlr_el1, 0, SCTLR_ELx_ATA | SCTLR_EL1_ATA0); mte_cpu_setup(); /* * Clear the tags in the zero page. This needs to be done via the - * linear map which has the Tagged attribute. + * linear map which has the Tagged attribute. Since this page is + * always mapped as pte_special(), set_pte_at() will not attempt to + * clear the tags or set PG_mte_tagged. */ - if (try_page_mte_tagging(ZERO_PAGE(0))) { + if (!cleared_zero_page) { + cleared_zero_page = true; mte_clear_page_tags(lm_alias(empty_zero_page)); - set_page_mte_tagged(ZERO_PAGE(0)); } kasan_init_hw_tags_cpu();