Re: [PATCH bpf-next] bpf: Replace scratch PTE atomically when allocating arena pages
From: "Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi" <memxor@gmail.com>
Date: 2026-06-02 22:29:23
Also in:
bpf, linux-mm, lkml, sched-ext
On Mon Jun 1, 2026 at 8:37 PM CEST, Tejun Heo wrote:
apply_range_set_cb() maps the pages for a new arena allocation and returned
-EBUSY when the target PTE was already populated. Kernel-fault recovery
leaves the per-arena scratch page in unallocated arena PTEs, so a later
bpf_arena_alloc_pages() over such a page hits that -EBUSY, and every
subsequent allocation of it fails the same way. Allocation must install the
real page over scratch instead.
Overwriting the scratch PTE in place is a valid->valid change, which arm64
forbids without break-before-make. Route through an invalid entry instead:
ptep_try_set() fills only a none slot, so the PTE goes scratch->none->page.
On finding scratch, clear it and flush_tlb_before_set() before retrying. The
new flush_tlb_before_set() is a no-op except on arches like arm64 that need
the break-before-make TLB invalidate. The loop also copes with a concurrent
fault re-scratching the slot.
Arches without ptep_try_set() never install the scratch page, so keep the
must-be-empty check and set_pte_at() for them.
Fixes: dc11a4dba246 ("bpf: Recover arena kernel faults with scratch page")
Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Alexei Starovoitov <ast@kernel.org>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@kernel.org>
---Acked-by: Kumar Kartikeya Dwivedi <memxor@gmail.com>