Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 12 Aug 2019 20:33:05 -0700
From:      Greg Lewis <glewis@eyesbeyond.com>
To:        freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Java stack overflow segfaults
Message-ID:  <20190813033305.GA85090@misty.eyesbeyond.com>
In-Reply-To: <20190812161629.GA99971@misty.eyesbeyond.com>
References:  <20190812161629.GA99971@misty.eyesbeyond.com>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Mon, Aug 12, 2019 at 09:16:29AM -0700, Greg Lewis wrote:
> I'm investigating an issue where, on FreeBSD, Java will crash rather than
> throw a StackOverflowError given a simple test program with a function
> that just calls itself over and over.  There's an example of such a test
> in https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=222146
> 
> This affects, I suspect, every native version of Java in the ports tree,
> although I've only tried openjdk8 and higher.  My investigation has mostly
> focused on openjdk11.
> 
> To outline the situation, Java uses pthreads internally for threading.  It
> doesn't use the pthreads own guard page(s), but instead creates it's own
> guard area at the bottom of the stack (which grows downward) using
> mprotect.  It then installs a signal handler and examines any SIGSEGV's
> fault address to see if it falls within the guard area, and if so throws a
> StackOverflowError.  This logic is the same across all of the OSes I've
> looked at and works on OpenBSD, Linux, etc.  On FreeBSD though, the fault
> address lies in the page above the guard zone, rather than in the guard
> zone, which results in a crash rather than throwing StackOverflowError.
> 
> An diagram may help here:
> 
> --- <- Stack top
> |
> | Untouched memory + stack frames + etc.
> |
> |
> | <-- SIGSEGV signal info fault address (< 1 page above guard zone) 
> --- <- Start of JVM reserved zone / guard zone
> |
> | JVM Reserved page
> |
> --- <- Start of JVM yellow zone
> |
> | JVM Yellow pages
> |
> --- <- Start of JVM red zone
> |
> | JVM Red page
> |
> --- <- Stack bottom
> |
> | Pthread guard page(s)
> |
> ---
> 
> On my FreeBSD 11.3/amd64 machine the JVM uses a total of four pages for the
> guard zone (1 reserved, 2 yellow, 1 red).  The page size is 4K, and I see
> the follow mprotect calls with truss:
> 
> mprotect(stack bottom address, 4K, PROT_NONE) (Just the red zone)
> mprotect(stack bottom address, 16K, PROT_NONE) (The entire guard zone)
> mprotect(top of red zone address, 12K, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE) (Reserved + yellow)
> mprotect(top of red zone address, 12K, PROT_NONE) (Reserved + yellow)
> 
> While I've committed a workaround for openjdk8, which just rounds down the
> fault address, it isn't entirely satisfactory (it's a hack) and I wondered
> if anyone had any insight into what may be going on.  I've done an analysis
> of the sizes and addresses being used and used truss to check the parameters
> to the mprotect calls, and everything appears to add up.
> 
> The same problem also occurs under FreeBSD 12.0/i386 and on aarch64, so it
> doesn't appear to be either version or platform specific.  I've simplified
> a little here, but am happy to provide additional details and code
> references.

This appears to be due to security.bsd.stack_guard_page and setting that
to different values alters the extra space which may contain the fault
address.

-- Greg



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20190813033305.GA85090>