[PATCH v9 0/6] ARM: VDSO

[cov@codeaurora.org (Christopher Covington)]

Hi Nathan,

On 09/03/2014 01:41 AM, Nathan Lynch wrote:
> On 08/27/2014 03:49 PM, Christopher Covington wrote:
>>
>> It appears to me that there is code in several architecture subdirectories
>> (I'm aware of x86, arm64, and with these patches arm[32] and I would be
>> surprised if there weren't more) doing largely the same setup of special
>> mappings at randomized offsets, checking ELF magic etc. Not that these patches
>> should necessarily do it, but is there a reasonable amount of consolidation
>> that could be done, or am I underestimating how much of this really does vary
>> per architecture?
> 
> Sorry to not respond to this promptly, was distracted by some other work.
> 
> As Andy said, the possibility for consolidating some aspects of VDSO support
> is there, but it would be a fair bit of work.
> 
> For example, arch_setup_additional_pages tends to have the general form of:
> 
> lock mmap_sem
> get_unmapped_area
> install_special_mapping (or _install_special_mapping, preferably)
> stash vdso address in mmu context
> release mmap_sem
> 
> But there are a lot of implementation details that differ:
> 
>          +----------------------------------------------------------------
>          | Number of VMAs installed
>          |   +------------------------------------------------------------
>          |   | Considers uses_interp
>          |   |     +------------------------------------------------------
>          |   |     | Uses _install_special_mapping
>          |   |     |     +------------------------------------------------
>          |   |     |     | Performs additional work (e.g. remap_pfn_range)
>          |   |     |     |     +------------------------------------------
>          |   |     |     |     | Randomizes VDSO offset vs stack and libs
>          |   |     |     |     |     +------------------------------------
>          |   |     |     |     |     | Records VDSO address in mmu context
>          |   |     |     |     |     |     +------------------------------
>          |   |     |     |     |     |     | Supports compat VDSO
>          |   |     |     |     |     |     |     +------------------------
>          |   |     |     |     |     |     |     | Supports disabling VDSO
>          |   |     |     |     |     |     |     | at boot (e.g. vdso=off)
>          |   |     |     |     |     |     |     |     +------------------
>          |   |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | Can disable VDSO
>  arch    |   |     |     |     |     |     |     |     | via Kconfig
> ---------+---+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+-----+------------------
>  arm*    | 3 | no  | yes | no  | yes | yes | no  | no  | yes
>  arm64   | 2 | no  | yes | no  | no  | yes | no  | no  | no
>  hexagon | 1 | no  | no  | no  | no  | yes | no  | no  | no
>  mips    | 1 | no  | no  | no  | no  | yes | no  | no  | no
>  powerpc | 1 | no  | no  | no  | no  | yes | yes | no  | no
>  s390    | 1 | yes | no  | no  | no  | yes | yes | yes | no
>  sh      | 1 | no  | no  | no  | no  | yes | no  | yes | yes
>  tile    | 1 | no  | no  | yes | no  | yes | no  | yes | no
>  x86     | 2 | no  | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | no
> 
> * With VDSO patches from this thread, of course.
> 
> I think pushing the mmap_sem lock/unlock up into the ELF loader might be
> of some benefit (slightly reduced complexity in the arch code).  But
> any generic replacement for arch_setup_additional_pages will have to
> account for all the differences above, and probably a few more I've
> missed.

I really appreciate the detailed response. I'll try to find time to explore
this further, hopefully using QEMU to run kernels for most of those architectures.

Christopher

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