[RFC][PATCH] x86: don't destroy %rbp on kernel-mode faults

[Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@gmail.com>]

Hi,

The RFC part of this patch is: Does anybody see why touching %rcx would
be bad? It certainly looks like %ecx is free. This fixes the stacktrace
problem I was seeing, and Pekka tested a bootup to userspace. (Pekka also
did half of the debugging. When will git allow multiple authors for a
patch? :-))


Vegard


>From b1cbf24fcd05aa5ed2e610c80c06bc519d3188f7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 21:39:44 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] x86: don't destroy %rbp on kernel-mode faults

>From the code:

    B stepping K8s sometimes report an truncated RIP for IRET exceptions
    returning to compat mode. Check for these here too.

The code then proceeds to truncate the upper 32 bits of %rbp. This means
that when do_page_fault() is finally called, its prologue,

    do_page_fault:
        push %rbp
        movl %rsp, %rbp

will put the truncated base pointer on the stack. This means that the
stack tracer will not be able to follow the base-pointer changes and
will see all subsequent stack frames as unreliable.

This patch changes the code to use a different register (%rcx) for the
checking and leaves %rbp untouched.

Cc: Andi Kleen <andi@firstfloor.org>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Pekka Enberg <penberg@cs.helsinki.fi>
Signed-off-by: Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@gmail.com>
---
 arch/x86/kernel/entry_64.S |    8 ++++----
 1 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/entry_64.S b/arch/x86/kernel/entry_64.S
index 1edd9ac..ff53692 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kernel/entry_64.S
+++ b/arch/x86/kernel/entry_64.S
@@ -926,11 +926,11 @@ error_kernelspace:
 	   iret run with kernel gs again, so don't set the user space flag.
 	   B stepping K8s sometimes report an truncated RIP for IRET 
 	   exceptions returning to compat mode. Check for these here too. */
-	leaq irq_return(%rip),%rbp
-	cmpq %rbp,RIP(%rsp) 
+	leaq irq_return(%rip),%rcx
+	cmpq %rcx,RIP(%rsp) 
 	je   error_swapgs
-	movl %ebp,%ebp	/* zero extend */
-	cmpq %rbp,RIP(%rsp) 
+	movl %ecx,%ecx	/* zero extend */
+	cmpq %rcx,RIP(%rsp) 
 	je   error_swapgs
 	cmpq $gs_change,RIP(%rsp)
         je   error_swapgs
-- 
1.5.4.1