Re: Removal of the kernel code/data/bss resources does break kexec/kdump

[Emrah Demir <ed@abdsec.com>]

On 2016-04-14 06:14, Freeman Zhang wrote:
> Mr. Torvalds,
> 
> I do notice your recent commit:
> 
>> commit c4004b02f8e5b9ce357a0bb1641756cc86962664
>> Author: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
>> Date:   Wed Apr 6 13:45:07 2016 -0700
>> 
>>     x86: remove the kernel code/data/bss resources from /proc/iomem
>> 
>> Let's see if anybody even notices.  I doubt anybody uses this, and it
>> does expose addresses that should be randomized, so let's just remove
>> the code.  It's old and traditional, and it used to be cute, but we
>> should have removed this long ago.
>> 
>> If it turns out anybody notices and this breaks something, we'll have 
>> to
>> revert this, and maybe we'll end up using other approaches instead
>> (using %pK or similar).  But removing unnecessary code is always the
>> preferred option.
> 
> Removal of these information causes 'kexec/kdump' to fail in the newer
> kernel, as 'kexec/arch/i386/crashdump-x86.c' is coded this way:
> 
> 
> /* Read kernel physical load addr from the file returned by 
> proc_iomem()
>  * (Kernel Code) and store in kexec_info */
> static int get_kernel_paddr(struct kexec_info *UNUSED(info),
>                             struct crash_elf_info *elf_info)
> {
>                ...
> 
>       if (parse_iomem_single("Kernel code\n", &start, NULL) == 0) {
>               elf_info->kern_paddr_start = start;
>               dbgprintf("kernel load physical addr start = 0x%016Lx\n",
>                         (unsigned long long)start);
>               return 0;
>       }
> 
>      fprintf(stderr, "Cannot determine kernel physical load addr\n");
>      return -1;
> }
> 
> 
> Should we revert this commit, or update kexec/kdump code?
> 

Ubuntu also has some issues with this patch. I think there are several 
issue that hasn't been noticed.
It would be better you to revert this patch. Updating kexec/kdump might 
not solve this problem.

Kees Cook proposed to write a %pK formatted patch. This would solve most 
of the problems.

https://lkml.org/lkml/2016/4/14/18

Best regards!
Emrah Demir

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