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-rw-r--r--Documentation/mm/page_table_check.rst19
-rw-r--r--mm/Kconfig.debug1
2 files changed, 20 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/mm/page_table_check.rst b/Documentation/mm/page_table_check.rst
index cfd8f4117cf3..c12838ce6b8d 100644
--- a/Documentation/mm/page_table_check.rst
+++ b/Documentation/mm/page_table_check.rst
@@ -52,3 +52,22 @@ Build kernel with:
Optionally, build kernel with PAGE_TABLE_CHECK_ENFORCED in order to have page
table support without extra kernel parameter.
+
+Implementation notes
+====================
+
+We specifically decided not to use VMA information in order to avoid relying on
+MM states (except for limited "struct page" info). The page table check is a
+separate from Linux-MM state machine that verifies that the user accessible
+pages are not falsely shared.
+
+PAGE_TABLE_CHECK depends on EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM. The reason is that without
+EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM, users are allowed to map arbitrary physical memory
+regions into the userspace via /dev/mem. At the same time, pages may change
+their properties (e.g., from anonymous pages to named pages) while they are
+still being mapped in the userspace, leading to "corruption" detected by the
+page table check.
+
+Even with EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM, I/O pages may be still allowed to be mapped via
+/dev/mem. However, these pages are always considered as named pages, so they
+won't break the logic used in the page table check.
diff --git a/mm/Kconfig.debug b/mm/Kconfig.debug
index a925415b4d10..018a5bd2f576 100644
--- a/mm/Kconfig.debug
+++ b/mm/Kconfig.debug
@@ -98,6 +98,7 @@ config PAGE_OWNER
config PAGE_TABLE_CHECK
bool "Check for invalid mappings in user page tables"
depends on ARCH_SUPPORTS_PAGE_TABLE_CHECK
+ depends on EXCLUSIVE_SYSTEM_RAM
select PAGE_EXTENSION
help
Check that anonymous page is not being mapped twice with read write