diff --git a/arch/x86/xen/enlighten.c b/arch/x86/xen/enlighten.c
index 0b95c9b8283fe2..11d6fb4e8483d5 100644
--- a/arch/x86/xen/enlighten.c
+++ b/arch/x86/xen/enlighten.c
@@ -483,6 +483,7 @@ static void set_aliased_prot(void *v, pgprot_t prot)
 	pte_t pte;
 	unsigned long pfn;
 	struct page *page;
+	unsigned char dummy;
 
 	ptep = lookup_address((unsigned long)v, &level);
 	BUG_ON(ptep == NULL);
@@ -492,6 +493,32 @@ static void set_aliased_prot(void *v, pgprot_t prot)
 
 	pte = pfn_pte(pfn, prot);
 
+	/*
+	 * Careful: update_va_mapping() will fail if the virtual address
+	 * we're poking isn't populated in the page tables.  We don't
+	 * need to worry about the direct map (that's always in the page
+	 * tables), but we need to be careful about vmap space.  In
+	 * particular, the top level page table can lazily propagate
+	 * entries between processes, so if we've switched mms since we
+	 * vmapped the target in the first place, we might not have the
+	 * top-level page table entry populated.
+	 *
+	 * We disable preemption because we want the same mm active when
+	 * we probe the target and when we issue the hypercall.  We'll
+	 * have the same nominal mm, but if we're a kernel thread, lazy
+	 * mm dropping could change our pgd.
+	 *
+	 * Out of an abundance of caution, this uses __get_user() to fault
+	 * in the target address just in case there's some obscure case
+	 * in which the target address isn't readable.
+	 */
+
+	preempt_disable();
+
+	pagefault_disable();	/* Avoid warnings due to being atomic. */
+	__get_user(dummy, (unsigned char __user __force *)v);
+	pagefault_enable();
+
 	if (HYPERVISOR_update_va_mapping((unsigned long)v, pte, 0))
 		BUG();
 
@@ -503,6 +530,8 @@ static void set_aliased_prot(void *v, pgprot_t prot)
 				BUG();
 	} else
 		kmap_flush_unused();
+
+	preempt_enable();
 }
 
 static void xen_alloc_ldt(struct desc_struct *ldt, unsigned entries)
@@ -510,6 +539,17 @@ static void xen_alloc_ldt(struct desc_struct *ldt, unsigned entries)
 	const unsigned entries_per_page = PAGE_SIZE / LDT_ENTRY_SIZE;
 	int i;
 
+	/*
+	 * We need to mark the all aliases of the LDT pages RO.  We
+	 * don't need to call vm_flush_aliases(), though, since that's
+	 * only responsible for flushing aliases out the TLBs, not the
+	 * page tables, and Xen will flush the TLB for us if needed.
+	 *
+	 * To avoid confusing future readers: none of this is necessary
+	 * to load the LDT.  The hypervisor only checks this when the
+	 * LDT is faulted in due to subsequent descriptor access.
+	 */
+
 	for(i = 0; i < entries; i += entries_per_page)
 		set_aliased_prot(ldt + i, PAGE_KERNEL_RO);
 }