[PATCH v9 12/12] x86, mpx: add documentation on Intel MPX

Qiaowei Ren
2014-10-12T04:41:55Z

This patch adds the Documentation/x86/intel_mpx.txt file with some
information about Intel MPX.

Signed-off-by: Qiaowei Ren <qiaowei.ren@intel.com>
---
Documentation/x86/intel_mpx.txt | 245 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 files changed, 245 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 Documentation/x86/intel_mpx.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/x86/intel_mpx.txt b/Documentation/x86/intel_mpx.txt
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+1. Intel(R) MPX Overview
+============
+
+Intel(R) Memory Protection Extensions (Intel(R) MPX) is a new capability
+introduced into Intel Architecture. Intel MPX provides hardware features
+that can be used in conjunction with compiler changes to check memory
+references, for those references whose compile-time normal intentions are
+usurped at runtime due to buffer overflow or underflow.
+
+For more information, please refer to Intel(R) Architecture Instruction
+Set Extensions Programming Reference, Chapter 9: Intel(R) Memory Protection
+Extensions.
+
+Note: Currently no hardware with MPX ISA is available but it is always
+possible to use SDE (Intel(R) Software Development Emulator) instead, which
+can be downloaded from
+http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/intel-software-development-emulator
+
+
+2. How to get the advantage of MPX
+=================
+
+For MPX to work, changes are required in the kernel, binutils and compiler.
+No source changes are required for applications, just a recompile.
+
+There are a lot of moving parts of this to all work right. The following
+is how we expect the compiler, application and kernel to work together.
+
+1) Application developer compiles with -fmpx. The compiler will add the
+ instrumentation as well as some setup code called early after the app
+ starts. New instruction prefixes are noops for old CPUs.
+2) That setup code allocates (virtual) space for the "bounds directory",
+ points the "bndcfgu" register to the directory and notifies the kernel
+ (via the new prctl(PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT)) that the app will be using
+ MPX.
+3) The kernel detects that the CPU has MPX, allows the new prctl() to
+ succeed, and notes the location of the bounds directory. Userspace is
+ expected to keep the bounds directory at that locationWe note it
+ instead of reading it each time because the 'xsave' operation needed
+ to access the bounds directory register is an expensive operation.
+4) If the application needs to spill bounds out of the 4 registers, it
+ issues a bndstx instruction. Since the bounds directory is empty at
+ this point, a bounds fault (#BR) is raised, the kernel allocates a
+ bounds table (in the user address space) and makes the relevant entry
+ in the bounds directory point to the new table.
+5) If the application violates the bounds specified in the bounds registers,
+ a separate kind of #BR is raised which will deliver a signal with
+ information about the violation in the 'struct siginfo'.
+6) Whenever memory is freed, we know that it can no longer contain valid
+ pointers, and we attempt to free the associated space in the bounds
+ tables. If an entire table becomes unused, we will attempt to free
+ the table and remove the entry in the directory.
+
+To summarize, there are essentially three things interacting here:
+
+GCC with -fmpx:
+ * enables annotation of code with MPX instructions and prefixes
+ * inserts code early in the application to call in to the "gcc runtime"
+GCC MPX Runtime:
+ * Checks for hardware MPX support in cpuid leaf
+ * allocates virtual space for the bounds directory (malloc() essentially)
+ * points the hardware BNDCFGU register at the directory
+ * calls a new prctl(PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT) to notify the kernel to
+ start managing the bounds directories
+Kernel MPX Code:
+ * Checks for hardware MPX support in cpuid leaf
+ * Handles #BR exceptions and sends SIGSEGV to the app when it violates
+ bounds, like during a buffer overflow.
+ * When bounds are spilled in to an unallocated bounds table, the kernel
+ notices in the #BR exception, allocates the virtual space, then
+ updates the bounds directory to point to the new table. It keeps
+ special track of the memory with a VM_MPX flag.
+ * Frees unused bounds tables at the time that the memory they described
+ is unmapped.
+
+
+3. How does MPX kernel code work
+================
+
+Handling #BR faults caused by MPX
+---------------------------------
+
+When MPX is enabled, there are 2 new situations that can generate
+#BR faults.
+ * new bounds tables (BT) need to be allocated to save bounds.
+ * bounds violation caused by MPX instructions.
+
+We hook #BR handler to handle these two new situations.
+
+On-demand kernel allocation of bounds tables
+--------------------------------------------
+
+MPX only has 4 hardware registers for storing bounds information. If
+MPX-enabled code needs more than these 4 registers, it needs to spill
+them somewhere. It has two special instructions for this which allow
+the bounds to be moved between the bounds registers and some new "bounds
+tables".
+
+#BR exceptions are a new class of exceptions just for MPX. They are
+similar conceptually to a page fault and will be raised by the MPX
+hardware during both bounds violations or when the tables are not
+present. The kernel handles those #BR exceptions for not-present tables
+by carving the space out of the normal processes address space and then
+pointing the bounds-directory over to it.
+
+The tables need to be accessed and controlled by userspace because
+the instructions for moving bounds in and out of them are extremely
+frequent. They potentially happen every time a register points to
+memory. Any direct kernel involvement (like a syscall) to access the
+tables would obviously destroy performance.
+
+Why not do this in userspace? MPX does not strictly require anything in
+the kernel. It can theoretically be done completely from userspace. Here
+are a few ways this could be done. We don't think any of them are practical
+in the real-world, but here they are.
+
+Q: Can virtual space simply be reserved for the bounds tables so that we
+ never have to allocate them?
+A: MPX-enabled application will possibly create a lot of bounds tables in
+ process address space to save bounds information. These tables can take
+ up huge swaths of memory (as much as 80% of the memory on the system)
+ even if we clean them up aggressively. In the worst-case scenario, the
+ tables can be 4x the size of the data structure being tracked. IOW, a
+ 1-page structure can require 4 bounds-table pages. An X-GB virtual
+ area needs 4*X GB of virtual space, plus 2GB for the bounds directory.
+ If we were to preallocate them for the 128TB of user virtual address
+ space, we would need to reserve 512TB+2GB, which is larger than the
+ entire virtual address space today. This means they can not be reserved
+ ahead of time. Also, a single process's pre-popualated bounds directory
+ consumes 2GB of virtual *AND* physical memory. IOW, it's completely
+ infeasible to prepopulate bounds directories.
+
+Q: Can we preallocate bounds table space at the same time memory is
+ allocated which might contain pointers that might eventually need
+ bounds tables?
+A: This would work if we could hook the site of each and every memory
+ allocation syscall. This can be done for small, constrained applications.
+ But, it isn't practical at a larger scale since a given app has no
+ way of controlling how all the parts of the app might allocate memory
+ (think libraries). The kernel is really the only place to intercept
+ these calls.
+
+Q: Could a bounds fault be handed to userspace and the tables allocated
+ there in a signal handler intead of in the kernel?
+A: mmap() is not on the list of safe async handler functions and even
+ if mmap() would work it still requires locking or nasty tricks to
+ keep track of the allocation state there.
+
+Having ruled out all of the userspace-only approaches for managing
+bounds tables that we could think of, we create them on demand in
+the kernel.
+
+Decoding MPX instructions
+-------------------------
+
+If a #BR is generated due to a bounds violation caused by MPX.
+We need to decode MPX instructions to get violation address and
+set this address into extended struct siginfo.
+
+The _sigfault feild of struct siginfo is extended as follow:
+
+87 /* SIGILL, SIGFPE, SIGSEGV, SIGBUS */
+88 struct {
+89 void __user *_addr; /* faulting insn/memory ref. */
+90 #ifdef __ARCH_SI_TRAPNO
+91 int _trapno; /* TRAP # which caused the signal */
+92 #endif
+93 short _addr_lsb; /* LSB of the reported address */
+94 struct {
+95 void __user *_lower;
+96 void __user *_upper;
+97 } _addr_bnd;
+98 } _sigfault;
+
+The '_addr' field refers to violation address, and new '_addr_and'
+field refers to the upper/lower bounds when a #BR is caused.
+
+Glibc will be also updated to support this new siginfo. So user
+can get violation address and bounds when bounds violations occur.
+
+Cleanup unused bounds tables
+----------------------------
+
+When a BNDSTX instruction attempts to save bounds to a bounds directory
+entry marked as invalid, a #BR is generated. This is an indication that
+no bounds table exists for this entry. In this case the fault handler
+will allocate a new bounds table on demand.
+
+Since the kernel allocated those tables on-demand without userspace
+knowledge, it is also responsible for freeing them when the associated
+mappings go away.
+
+Here, the solution for this issue is to hook do_munmap() to check
+whether one process is MPX enabled. If yes, those bounds tables covered
+in the virtual address region which is being unmapped will be freed also.
+
+Adding new prctl commands
+-------------------------
+
+Two new prctl commands are added to enable and disable MPX bounds tables
+management in kernel.
+
+155 #define PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT 43
+156 #define PR_MPX_DISABLE_MANAGEMENT 44
+
+Runtime library in userspace is responsible for allocation of bounds
+directory. So kernel have to use XSAVE instruction to get the base
+of bounds directory from BNDCFG register.
+
+But XSAVE is expected to be very expensive. In order to do performance
+optimization, we have to get the base of bounds directory and save it
+into struct mm_struct to be used in future during PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT
+command execution.
+
+
+4. Special rules
+========
+
+To well use this facility and this kernel side of it, the following
+are some rules for what well-behaved userspace is expected to do.
+
+1) If userspace is requiring help from the kernel to do the management
+of bounds tables, it can not create bounds tables and point the bounds
+directory at them.
+
+When #BR fault is produced due to invalid entry, bounds table will be
+created in kernel on demand and kernel will not transfer this fault to
+userspace. So usersapce can't receive #BR fault for invalid entry, and
+it is not also necessary for users to create bounds tables by themselves.
+
+Certainly users can allocate bounds tables and forcibly point the bounds
+directory at them through XSAVE instruction, and then set valid bit
+of bounds entry to have this entry valid. But we have no way to track
+the memory usage of these user-created bounds tables.
+
+2) Userspace can not take multiple bounds directory entries and point
+them at the same bounds table.
+
+Users can be allowed to do this. See more information "Intel(R) Architecture
+Instruction Set Extensions Programming Reference" (9.3.4).
+
+But if users did this, it will be possible for kernel to unmap an in-use
+bounds table since it does not recognize sharing. So we will not support
+the case that multiple bounds directory entries are pointed at the same
+bounds table.
--
1.7.1