Re: [PATCH 1/9] kernel: add a PF_FORCE_COMPAT flag

Matthew Wilcox
2020-09-20T19:02:09Z

On Sun, Sep 20, 2020 at 07:07:42PM +0100, Al Viro wrote:
> 2) a few drivers are really fucked in head. They use different
> *DATA* layouts for reads/writes, depending upon the calling process.
> IOW, if you fork/exec a 32bit binary and your stdin is one of those,
> reads from stdin in parent and child will yield different data layouts.
> On the same struct file.
> That's what Christoph worries about (/dev/sg he'd mentioned is
> one of those).
>
> IMO we should simply have that dozen or so of pathological files
> marked with FMODE_SHITTY_ABI; it's not about how they'd been opened -
> it describes the userland ABI provided by those. And it's cast in stone.
>
> Any in_compat_syscall() in ->read()/->write() instances is an ABI
> bug, plain and simple. Some are unfixable for compatibility reasons, but
> any new caller like that should be a big red flag.

So an IOCB_COMPAT flag would let us know whether the caller is expecting
a 32-bit or 64-bit layout? And io_uring could set it based on the
ctx->compat flag.

> Current list of those turds:
> /dev/sg (pointer-chasing, generally insane)
> /sys/firmware/efi/vars/*/raw_var (fucked binary structure)
> /sys/firmware/efi/vars/new_var (fucked binary structure)
> /sys/firmware/efi/vars/del_var (fucked binary structure)
> /dev/uhid (pointer-chasing for one obsolete command)
> /dev/input/event* (timestamps)
> /dev/uinput (timestamps)
> /proc/bus/input/devices (fucked bitmap-to-text representation)
> /sys/class/input/*/capabilities/* (fucked bitmap-to-text representation)