Re: [RFC, PATCHv2 29/29] mm, x86: introduce RLIMIT_VADDR

[Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>]

On Thu, Jan 5, 2017 at 11:39 AM, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com> wrote:
> On 01/05/2017 11:29 AM, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 05, 2017 at 11:13:57AM -0800, Dave Hansen wrote:
>>> On 12/26/2016 05:54 PM, Kirill A. Shutemov wrote:
>>>> MM would use min(RLIMIT_VADDR, TASK_SIZE) as upper limit of virtual
>>>> address available to map by userspace.
>>>
>>> What happens to existing mappings above the limit when this upper limit
>>> is dropped?
>>
>> Nothing: we only prevent creating new mappings. All existing are not
>> affected.
>>
>> The semantics here the same as with other resource limits.
>>
>>> Similarly, why do we do with an application running with something
>>> incompatible with the larger address space that tries to raise the
>>> limit?  Say, legacy MPX.
>>
>> It has to know what it does. Yes, it can change limit to the point where
>> application is unusable. But you can to the same with other limits.
>
> I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this.  Do other rlimit changes cause
> silent data corruption?  I'm pretty sure doing this to MPX would.
>

What actually goes wrong in this case?  That is, what combination of
MPX setup of subsequent allocations will cause a problem, and is the
problem worse than just a segfault?  IMO it would be really nice to
keep the messy case confined to MPX.

FWIW, this problem is kind of generic.  If you run code in a process,
MPX or otherwise, that assumes something about pointer values and then
create a pointer that violates its assumptions, you will cause
problems.  For example, some VMs use high bits to store metadata.  If
you feed a pointer that's too big to such code, boom.  This is exactly
why high addresses need to be opt-in.

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