Re: [RESEND PATCH v4 10/11] powerpc: Protect patching_mm with a lock

On Thu May 6, 2021 at 5:51 AM CDT, Peter Zijlstra wrote:

On Wed, May 05, 2021 at 11:34:51PM -0500, Christopher M. Riedl wrote:

quoted

Powerpc allows for multiple CPUs to patch concurrently. When patching
with STRICT_KERNEL_RWX a single patching_mm is allocated for use by all
CPUs for the few times that patching occurs. Use a spinlock to protect
the patching_mm from concurrent use.

Modify patch_instruction() to acquire the lock, perform the patch op,
and then release the lock.

Also introduce {lock,unlock}_patching() along with
patch_instruction_unlocked() to avoid per-iteration lock overhead when
patch_instruction() is called in a loop. A follow-up patch converts some
uses of patch_instruction() to use patch_instruction_unlocked() instead.

x86 uses text_mutex for all this, why not do the same?

I wasn't entirely sure if there is a problem with potentially going to
sleep in some of the places where patch_instruction() is called - the
spinlock avoids that (hypothetical) problem.

I just tried switching to text_mutex and at least on a P9 machine the
series boots w/ the Hash and Radix MMUs (with some lockdep errors). I
can rework this in the next version to use text_mutex if I don't find
any new problems with more extensive testing. It does mean more changes
to use patch_instruction_unlocked() in kprobe/optprobe/ftace in
arch/powerpc since iirc those are called with text_mutex already held.

Thanks!
Chris R.