Re: [PATCH v23 09/28] x86/mm: Introduce _PAGE_COW

Kirill A. Shutemov
2021-03-22T11:29:47Z

On Tue, Mar 16, 2021 at 08:10:35AM -0700, Yu-cheng Yu wrote:
> There is essentially no room left in the x86 hardware PTEs on some OSes
> (not Linux). That left the hardware architects looking for a way to
> represent a new memory type (shadow stack) within the existing bits.
> They chose to repurpose a lightly-used state: Write=0, Dirty=1.
>
> The reason it's lightly used is that Dirty=1 is normally set by hardware
> and cannot normally be set by hardware on a Write=0 PTE. Software must
> normally be involved to create one of these PTEs, so software can simply
> opt to not create them.
>
> In places where Linux normally creates Write=0, Dirty=1, it can use the
> software-defined _PAGE_COW in place of the hardware _PAGE_DIRTY. In other
> words, whenever Linux needs to create Write=0, Dirty=1, it instead creates
> Write=0, Cow=1, except for shadow stack, which is Write=0, Dirty=1. This
> clearly separates shadow stack from other data, and results in the
> following:
>
> (a) A modified, copy-on-write (COW) page: (Write=0, Cow=1)
> (b) A R/O page that has been COW'ed: (Write=0, Cow=1)
> The user page is in a R/O VMA, and get_user_pages() needs a writable
> copy. The page fault handler creates a copy of the page and sets
> the new copy's PTE as Write=0 and Cow=1.
> (c) A shadow stack PTE: (Write=0, Dirty=1)
> (d) A shared shadow stack PTE: (Write=0, Cow=1)
> When a shadow stack page is being shared among processes (this happens
> at fork()), its PTE is made Dirty=0, so the next shadow stack access
> causes a fault, and the page is duplicated and Dirty=1 is set again.
> This is the COW equivalent for shadow stack pages, even though it's
> copy-on-access rather than copy-on-write.
> (e) A page where the processor observed a Write=1 PTE, started a write, set
> Dirty=1, but then observed a Write=0 PTE. That's possible today, but
> will not happen on processors that support shadow stack.
>
> Define _PAGE_COW and update pte_*() helpers and apply the same changes to
> pmd and pud.
>
> After this, there are six free bits left in the 64-bit PTE, and no more
> free bits in the 32-bit PTE (except for PAE) and Shadow Stack is not
> implemented for the 32-bit kernel.
>
> Signed-off-by: Yu-cheng Yu <yu-cheng.yu@intel.com>

Reviewed-by: Kirill A. Shutemov <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>

--
Kirill A. Shutemov