From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Paolo Bonzini Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Does __KERNEL_DS serve a purpose? Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2016 19:12:33 +0200 Message-ID: <5707E681.7040202@redhat.com> References: <5707654F.1060407@citrix.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Andy Lutomirski , X86 ML , "linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org" , Borislav Petkov , kvm list , xen-devel To: Andy Lutomirski , Andrew Cooper Return-path: In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: kvm.vger.kernel.org On 08/04/2016 18:00, Andy Lutomirski wrote: > But %ss can be loaded with 0 on 64-bit kernels. (I assume that > loading 0 into %ss sets SS.DPL to 0 if done at CPL0, but I'm vague on > this, since it only really matters to hypervisor code AFAIK.) It's even simpler, unless CPL=0 SS cannot be loaded with 0 while in a 64-bit code segment (SS can never be loaded with 0 if you're not in a 64-bit code segment). Thus indeed SS=0 implies SS.DPL=0 on 64-bit kernels. Paolo > 32-bit kernels need __KERNEL_DS, I think.