Re: [PATCH] alpha: Fix personality flag propagation across an exec

Jeff Xu
2025-01-09T00:52:32Z

On Wed, Jan 8, 2025 at 2:49 PM Kees Cook <kees@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Jan 03, 2025 at 03:01:46PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> > It was observed that on alpha, the misc/setarch test of
> > the util-linux testsuite failed with the following error:
> >
> > misc: setarch ...
> > : options ... OK
> > : uname26 ... OK
> > : uname26-version ... FAILED (misc/setarch-uname26-version)
> > : show ... OK
> > ... FAILED (1 from 4 sub-tests)
> >
> > Running the setarch binary manually confirmed that setting
> > the kernel version with the help --uname-2.6 flag does not
> > work and the version remains unchanged.
> >
> > It turned out that on alpha, the personality flags are not
> > propagated but overridden during an exec. The same issue was
> > previously fixed on arm in commit 5e143436d044 ("ARM: 6878/1:
> > fix personality flag propagation across an exec") and on powerpc
> > in commit a91a03ee31a5 ("powerpc: Keep 3 high personality bytes
> > across exec"). This patch fixes the issue on alpha.
>
> Good catch!
>
> >
> > With the patch applied, the misc/setarch test succeeds on
> > alpha as expected:
> >
> > misc: setarch ...
> > : options ... OK
> > : uname26 ... OK
> > : uname26-version ... OK
> > : show ... OK
> > ... OK (all 4 sub-tests PASSED)
> >
> > However, as a side-effect, a warning is printed on the kernel
> > message buffer which might indicate another unreleated bug:
> >
> > [ 39.964823] pid=509, couldn't seal address 0, ret=-12.
>
> This is from mseal vs MMAP_PAGE_ZERO in fs/binfmt_elf.c
>
> error = vm_mmap(NULL, 0, PAGE_SIZE, PROT_READ | PROT_EXEC,
> MAP_FIXED | MAP_PRIVATE, 0);
>
> retval = do_mseal(0, PAGE_SIZE, 0);
> if (retval)
> pr_warn_ratelimited("pid=%d, couldn't seal address 0, ret=%d.\n",
> task_pid_nr(current), retval);
>
> -12 is ENOMEM, which implies, I think, that check_mm_seal() failed. I
> note that "error" isn't being checked, so if the vm_mmap() failed, I
> think the do_mseal() would fail with ENOMEM?
>
Yes. do_mseal would fail with NOMEM if the address was not found.

It is likely that alpha doesn't allow creating a page on zero address
? i.e. MMAP_PAGE_ZERO personality never worked on alpha.

-Jeff

> > Signed-off-by: John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>
>
> Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <kees@kernel.org>
>
> -Kees
>
> > ---
> > arch/alpha/include/asm/elf.h | 4 ++--
> > 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/arch/alpha/include/asm/elf.h b/arch/alpha/include/asm/elf.h
> > index 4d7c46f50382..81f8473bb7c0 100644
> > --- a/arch/alpha/include/asm/elf.h
> > +++ b/arch/alpha/include/asm/elf.h
> > @@ -138,8 +138,8 @@ extern int dump_elf_task(elf_greg_t *dest, struct task_struct *task);
> > })
> >
> > #define SET_PERSONALITY(EX) \
> > - set_personality(((EX).e_flags & EF_ALPHA_32BIT) \
> > - ? PER_LINUX_32BIT : PER_LINUX)
> > + set_personality((((EX).e_flags & EF_ALPHA_32BIT) \
> > + ? PER_LINUX_32BIT : PER_LINUX) | (current->personality & (~PER_MASK)))
> >
> > extern int alpha_l1i_cacheshape;
> > extern int alpha_l1d_cacheshape;
> > --
> > 2.39.5
> >
>
> --
> Kees Cook
>