Re: [PATCH 3/3] x86/efi: Use efi_switch_mm() rather than manually twiddling with cr3

Andy Lutomirski
2017-08-16T16:14:41Z

On Wed, Aug 16, 2017 at 5:57 AM, Matt Fleming <matt-mF/unelCI9GS6iBeEJttW/XRex20P6io@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 16 Aug, at 12:03:22PM, Mark Rutland wrote:
>>
>> I'd expect we'd abort at a higher level, not taking any sample. i.e.
>> we'd have the core overflow handler check in_funny_mm(), and if so, skip
>> the sample, as with the skid case.
>
> FYI, this is my preferred solution for x86 too.

One option for the "funny mm" flag would be literally the condition
current->mm != current->active_mm. I *think* this gets all the cases
right as long as efi_switch_mm is careful with its ordering and that
the arch switch_mm() code can handle the resulting ordering. (x86's
can now, I think, or at least will be able to in 4.14 -- not sure
about other arches).

That being said, there's a totally different solution: run EFI
callbacks in a kernel thread. This has other benefits: we could run
those callbacks in user mode some day, and doing *that* in a user
thread seems like a mistake.

--Andy