Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH 10/34] linux-user: Support for restarting system calls for Microblaze targets

["Edgar E. Iglesias" <edgar.iglesias@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Mar 03, 2016 at 08:15:13PM +0000, Peter Maydell wrote:
> Hi Edgar -- I'm just looking back at these signal handling
> race condition fix patches, and with this one I have a confusion
> about the Microblaze Linux syscall code that I hope you can
> clear up for me.
> 
> Looking at the kernel entry.S code it looks to me like
> the way syscalls work on microblaze is:
>  * syscall insn is brki r14
>  * the insn itself saves the PC of the brki into r14
>  * on entry the kernel advances r14 by 4 to skip the brki
>  * then SAVE_REGS saves r14 into the 'PC' slot in the pt_regs
>    struct
>  * for syscall restart handle_restart() may wind the PC
>    value in the pt_regs back by 4
>  * in any case, on syscall exit we pull the PC value out of
>    pt_regs into r14, and do a return with rtbd r14, 0

Yes, that sounds right.

> 
> I think what this implies is that:
>  * r14 is a "used by the kernel, may be corrupted at any
>    time, not to be touched by userspace" register

Yes. r14 is not really usable by user-space, interrupts will for example clobber r14 at any time aswell.

>  * on exit from a syscall PC and r14 are always the same

Yes that's how it works but as far as user-space is concerned r14 may have any value at any time as it's not really observable in a safe way.

>  * this includes do_sigreturn, ie "taking a signal" is one
>    of the things that can corrupt r14

Yes.

> 
> Is that right?

Yes, I think so.

> (For context, the original patch is this one:
> http://patchwork.ozlabs.org/patch/514879/
> and I now suspect my review comments at the time to be wrong.)

I see. Functionally I think the patch is OK. It seems to have some whitespace fixes mixed with functional changes (nitpick). Either way:

Reviewed-by: Edgar E. Iglesias <edgar.iglesias@xilinx.com>

Best regards,
Edgar