Re: [PATCH v2 bpf-next 1/4] bpf: introduce task_vma bpf_iter

On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 8:33 PM Song Liu [off-list ref] wrote:

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ahh. I missed that. Makes sense.
vm_file needs to be accurate, but vm_area_struct should be accessed as ptr_to_btf_id.

Passing pointer of vm_area_struct into BPF will be tricky. For example, shall we
allow the user to access vma->vm_file? IIUC, with ptr_to_btf_id the verifier will
allow access of vma->vm_file as a valid pointer to struct file. However, since the
vma might be freed, vma->vm_file could point to random data.

I don't think so. The proposed patch will do get_file() on it.
There is actually no need to assign it into a different variable.
Accessing it via vma->vm_file is safe and cleaner.

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[1] ff9f47f6f00c ("mm: proc: smaps_rollup: do not stall write attempts on mmap_lock")

Thanks for this link. With "if (mmap_lock_is_contended())" check it should work indeed.

To make sure we are on the same page: I am using slightly different mechanism in
task_vma_iter, which doesn't require checking mmap_lock_is_contended(). In the
smaps_rollup case, the code only unlock mmap_sem when the lock is contended. In
task_iter, we always unlock mmap_sem between two iterations. This is because we
don't want to hold mmap_sem while calling the BPF program, which may sleep (calling
bpf_d_path).

That part is clear. I had to look into mmap_read_lock_killable() implementation
to realize that it's checking for lock_is_contended after acquiring
and releasing
if there is a contention. So it's the same behavior at the end.