Re: [PATCH V3.1] entry: Pass irqentry_state_t by reference

Thomas Gleixner
2020-12-17T13:07:09Z

On Fri, Dec 11 2020 at 14:14, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2020 at 10:10 PM <ira.weiny@intel.com> wrote:
> After contemplating this for a bit, I think this isn't really the
> right approach. It *works*, but we've mostly just created a bit of an
> unfortunate situation. Our stack, on a (possibly nested) entry looks
> like:
>
> previous frame (or empty if we came from usermode)
> ---
> SS
> RSP
> FLAGS
> CS
> RIP
> rest of pt_regs
>
> C frame
>
> irqentry_state_t (maybe -- the compiler is within its rights to play
> almost arbitrary games here)
>
> more C stuff
>
> So what we've accomplished is having two distinct arch register
> regions, one called pt_regs and the other stuck in irqentry_state_t.
> This is annoying because it means that, if we want to access this
> thing without passing a pointer around or access it at all from outer
> frames, we need to do something terrible with the unwinder, and we
> don't want to go there.
>
> So I propose a somewhat different solution: lay out the stack like this.
>
> SS
> RSP
> FLAGS
> CS
> RIP
> rest of pt_regs
> PKS
> ^^^^^^^^ extended_pt_regs points here
>
> C frame
> more C stuff
> ...
>
> IOW we have:
>
> struct extended_pt_regs {
> bool rcu_whatever;
> other generic fields here;
> struct arch_extended_pt_regs arch_regs;
> struct pt_regs regs;
> };
>
> and arch_extended_pt_regs has unsigned long pks;
>
> and instead of passing a pointer to irqentry_state_t to the generic
> entry/exit code, we just pass a pt_regs pointer.

While I agree vs. PKS which is architecture specific state and needed in
other places e.g. #PF, I'm not convinced that sticking the existing
state into the same area buys us anything more than an indirect access.

Peter?

Thanks,

tglx