[PATCH v6 38/39] kasan: documentation updates

andrey.konovalov
2022-01-24T19:07:51Z

Update KASAN documentation:

- Bump Clang version requirement for HW_TAGS as ARM64_MTE depends on
AS_HAS_LSE_ATOMICS as of commit 2decad92f4731 ("arm64: mte: Ensure
TIF_MTE_ASYNC_FAULT is set atomically"), which requires Clang 12.
- Add description of the new kasan.vmalloc command line flag.
- Mention that SW_TAGS and HW_TAGS modes now support vmalloc tagging.
- Explicitly say that the "Shadow memory" section is only applicable
to software KASAN modes.
- Mention that shadow-based KASAN_VMALLOC is supported on arm64.

Signed-off-by: Andrey Konovalov <andreyknvl@google.com>
---
Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst | 17 +++++++++++------
1 file changed, 11 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst b/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
index 8089c559d339..7614a1fc30fa 100644
--- a/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
+++ b/Documentation/dev-tools/kasan.rst
@@ -30,7 +30,7 @@ Software tag-based KASAN mode is only supported in Clang.

The hardware KASAN mode (#3) relies on hardware to perform the checks but
still requires a compiler version that supports memory tagging instructions.
-This mode is supported in GCC 10+ and Clang 11+.
+This mode is supported in GCC 10+ and Clang 12+.

Both software KASAN modes work with SLUB and SLAB memory allocators,
while the hardware tag-based KASAN currently only supports SLUB.
@@ -206,6 +206,9 @@ additional boot parameters that allow disabling KASAN or controlling features:
Asymmetric mode: a bad access is detected synchronously on reads and
asynchronously on writes.

+- ``kasan.vmalloc=off`` or ``=on`` disables or enables tagging of vmalloc
+ allocations (default: ``on``).
+
- ``kasan.stacktrace=off`` or ``=on`` disables or enables alloc and free stack
traces collection (default: ``on``).

@@ -279,8 +282,8 @@ Software tag-based KASAN uses 0xFF as a match-all pointer tag (accesses through
pointers with the 0xFF pointer tag are not checked). The value 0xFE is currently
reserved to tag freed memory regions.

-Software tag-based KASAN currently only supports tagging of slab and page_alloc
-memory.
+Software tag-based KASAN currently only supports tagging of slab, page_alloc,
+and vmalloc memory.

Hardware tag-based KASAN
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
@@ -303,8 +306,8 @@ Hardware tag-based KASAN uses 0xFF as a match-all pointer tag (accesses through
pointers with the 0xFF pointer tag are not checked). The value 0xFE is currently
reserved to tag freed memory regions.

-Hardware tag-based KASAN currently only supports tagging of slab and page_alloc
-memory.
+Hardware tag-based KASAN currently only supports tagging of slab, page_alloc,
+and VM_ALLOC-based vmalloc memory.

If the hardware does not support MTE (pre ARMv8.5), hardware tag-based KASAN
will not be enabled. In this case, all KASAN boot parameters are ignored.
@@ -319,6 +322,8 @@ checking gets disabled.
Shadow memory
-------------

+The contents of this section are only applicable to software KASAN modes.
+
The kernel maps memory in several different parts of the address space.
The range of kernel virtual addresses is large: there is not enough real
memory to support a real shadow region for every address that could be
@@ -349,7 +354,7 @@ CONFIG_KASAN_VMALLOC

With ``CONFIG_KASAN_VMALLOC``, KASAN can cover vmalloc space at the
cost of greater memory usage. Currently, this is supported on x86,
-riscv, s390, and powerpc.
+arm64, riscv, s390, and powerpc.

This works by hooking into vmalloc and vmap and dynamically
allocating real shadow memory to back the mappings.