RE: [RFC PATCH v2 1/2] rseq: x86: implement abort-at-ip extension

David Laight
2022-01-12T15:15:33Z

From: Mathieu Desnoyers
> Sent: 12 January 2022 15:06
>
> ----- On Jan 12, 2022, at 9:58 AM, David Laight David.Laight@ACULAB.COM wrote:
>
> >> * [*] The openrisc, powerpc64 and x86-64 architectures define a "redzone" as a
> >> * stack area beyond the stack pointer which can be used by the compiler
> >> * to store local variables in leaf functions.
> >
> > I wonder if that is really worth the trouble it causes!
> > By the time a function is spilling values to stack the cost
> > of a %sp update is almost certainly noise.
> >
> > Someone clearly thought it was a 'good idea (tm)'.
>
> I must admit that I've been surprised to learn about these redzones. Thanks for
> pointing them out to me, it was clearly a blind spot. I suspect it would be useful
> to introduce per-architecture KERNEL_REDZONE, USER_REDZONE and COMPAT_USER_REDZONE
> with a asm-generic version defining them to 0, with proper documentation. It would
> make it clearer to kernel developers working on stuff similar to signal handler
> delivery that they need to consider these carefully.

They can never be used in kernel - any ISR would overwrite them.

David

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