Re: [RFC PATCH v2 03/18] x86/asm/head: standardize the bottom of the stack for idle tasks

Josh Poimboeuf
2016-04-29T20:50:52Z

On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 12:39:16PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 1:44 PM, Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> wrote:
> > Thanks to all the recent x86 entry code refactoring, most tasks' kernel
> > stacks start at the same offset right above their saved pt_regs,
> > regardless of which syscall was used to enter the kernel. That creates
> > a nice convention which makes it straightforward to identify the
> > "bottom" of the stack, which can be useful for stack walking code which
> > needs to verify the stack is sane.
> >
> > However there are still a few types of tasks which don't yet follow that
> > convention:
> >
> > 1) CPU idle tasks, aka the "swapper" tasks
> >
> > 2) freshly forked TIF_FORK tasks which don't have a stack at all
> >
> > Make the idle tasks conform to the new stack bottom convention by
> > starting their stack at a sizeof(pt_regs) offset from the end of the
> > stack page.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
> > ---
> > arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S | 7 ++++---
> > 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S b/arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S
> > index 6dbd2c0..0b12311 100644
> > --- a/arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S
> > +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S
> > @@ -296,8 +296,9 @@ ENTRY(start_cpu)
> > * REX.W + FF /5 JMP m16:64 Jump far, absolute indirect,
> > * address given in m16:64.
> > */
> > - movq initial_code(%rip),%rax
> > - pushq $0 # fake return address to stop unwinder
> > + call 1f # put return address on stack for unwinder
> > +1: xorq %rbp, %rbp # clear frame pointer
> > + movq initial_code(%rip), %rax
> > pushq $__KERNEL_CS # set correct cs
> > pushq %rax # target address in negative space
> > lretq
> > @@ -325,7 +326,7 @@ ENDPROC(start_cpu0)
> > GLOBAL(initial_gs)
> > .quad INIT_PER_CPU_VAR(irq_stack_union)
> > GLOBAL(initial_stack)
> > - .quad init_thread_union+THREAD_SIZE-8
> > + .quad init_thread_union + THREAD_SIZE - SIZEOF_PTREGS
>
> As long as you're doing this, could you also set orig_ax to -1? I
> remember running into some oddities resulting from orig_ax containing
> garbage at some point.

I assume you mean to initialize the orig_rax value in the pt_regs at the
bottom of the stack of the idle task?

How could that cause a problem? Since the idle task never returns from
a system call, I'd assume that memory never gets accessed?

--
Josh