Re: [PATCH v12 01/12] lib: introduce copy_struct_{to,from}_user helpers

Aleksa Sarai
2019-09-05T13:35:52Z

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On 2019-09-05, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 05, 2019 at 07:26:22PM +1000, Aleksa Sarai wrote:
> > On 2019-09-05, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:
> > > On Thu, Sep 05, 2019 at 06:19:22AM +1000, Aleksa Sarai wrote:
> > > > +/**
> > > > + * copy_struct_to_user: copy a struct to user space
> > > > + * @dst: Destination address, in user space.
> > > > + * @usize: Size of @dst struct.
> > > > + * @src: Source address, in kernel space.
> > > > + * @ksize: Size of @src struct.
> > > > + *
> > > > + * Copies a struct from kernel space to user space, in a way that guarantees
> > > > + * backwards-compatibility for struct syscall arguments (as long as future
> > > > + * struct extensions are made such that all new fields are *appended* to the
> > > > + * old struct, and zeroed-out new fields have the same meaning as the old
> > > > + * struct).
> > > > + *
> > > > + * @ksize is just sizeof(*dst), and @usize should've been passed by user space.
> > > > + * The recommended usage is something like the following:
> > > > + *
> > > > + * SYSCALL_DEFINE2(foobar, struct foo __user *, uarg, size_t, usize)
> > > > + * {
> > > > + * int err;
> > > > + * struct foo karg = {};
> > > > + *
> > > > + * // do something with karg
> > > > + *
> > > > + * err = copy_struct_to_user(uarg, usize, &karg, sizeof(karg));
> > > > + * if (err)
> > > > + * return err;
> > > > + *
> > > > + * // ...
> > > > + * }
> > > > + *
> > > > + * There are three cases to consider:
> > > > + * * If @usize == @ksize, then it's copied verbatim.
> > > > + * * If @usize < @ksize, then kernel space is "returning" a newer struct to an
> > > > + * older user space. In order to avoid user space getting incomplete
> > > > + * information (new fields might be important), all trailing bytes in @src
> > > > + * (@ksize - @usize) must be zerored
> > >
> > > s/zerored/zero/, right?
> >
> > It should've been "zeroed".
>
> That reads wrong to me; that way it reads like this function must take
> that action and zero out the 'rest'; which is just wrong.
>
> This function must verify those bytes are zero, not make them zero.

Right, in my head I was thinking "must have been zeroed" which isn't
what it says. I'll switch to "zero".

> > > > , otherwise -EFBIG is returned.
> > >
> > > 'Funny' that, copy_struct_from_user() below seems to use E2BIG.
> >
> > This is a copy of the semantics that sched_[sg]etattr(2) uses -- E2BIG for
> > a "too big" struct passed to the kernel, and EFBIG for a "too big"
> > struct passed to user-space. I would personally have preferred EMSGSIZE
> > instead of EFBIG, but felt using the existing error codes would be less
> > confusing.
>
> Sadly a recent commit:
>
> 1251201c0d34 ("sched/core: Fix uclamp ABI bug, clean up and robustify sched_read_attr() ABI logic and code")
>
> Made the situation even 'worse'.

I hadn't seen this patch before, and I have a few questions taking a
look at it:

* An error code for a particular behaviour was changed (EFBIG ->
E2BIG). Is this not a userspace breakage (I know Linus went ballistic
about something similar a while ago[1]), or did I misunderstand what
the issue was in [1]?
* At the risk of bike-shedding -- of we are changing it, wouldn't
-EMSGSIZE be more appropriate? To be fair, picking errno values has
always been more of an art than a science, but to my ears "Argument
list too long" doesn't make too much sense in the context of
"returning" a struct back to userspace (and the cause of the error
is that the argument passed by user space *isn't big enough*). If
there was an E2SMALL that would also work. ;)

* Do you want me to write a patch based on that, to switch it to
copy_struct_to_user()?

* That patch removes the "are there non-zero bytes in the tail that
userspace won't know about" check (which I have included in mine). I
understand that this caused issues specifically with sched_getattr(2)
due to the default value not being zero -- how should we rectify that
(given that we'd hopefully want to port everyone who uses that
interface to copy_struct_{to,from}_user())?

* Given that the [uk]attr->size construct is pretty important to the
usability of the sched and perf interfaces, should we require (or
encourage) it for all struct-extension syscall setups?

> > > > + if (unlikely(!access_ok(src, usize)))
> > > > + return -EFAULT;
> > > > +
> > > > + /* Deal with trailing bytes. */
> > > > + if (usize < ksize)
> > > > + memset(dst + size, 0, rest);
> > > > + else if (usize > ksize) {
> > > > + const void __user *addr = src + size;
> > > > + char buffer[BUFFER_SIZE] = {};
> > >
> > > Isn't that too big for on-stack?
> >
> > Is a 64-byte buffer too big? I picked the number "at random" to be the
> > size of a cache line, but I could shrink it down to 32 bytes if the size
> > is an issue (I wanted to avoid needless allocations -- hence it being
> > on-stack).
>
> Ah, my ctags gave me a definition of BUFFER_SIZE that was 512. I suppose
> 64 should be OK.

Good to know, though I'll rename it to avoid confusion.

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CA+55aFy98A+LJK4+GWMcbzaa1zsPBRo76q+ioEjbx-uaMKH6Uw@mail.gmail.com/

--
Aleksa Sarai
Senior Software Engineer (Containers)
SUSE Linux GmbH
<https://www.cyphar.com/>

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