Re: [PATCH] arm64: Add translation functions for /dev/mem read/write

Ard Biesheuvel
2017-05-04T06:40:59Z

On 3 May 2017 at 22:47, Goel, Sameer <sgoel@codeaurora.org> wrote:
>
>
> On 5/3/2017 2:18 PM, Leif Lindholm wrote:
>> On Wed, May 03, 2017 at 11:07:45AM -0600, Goel, Sameer wrote:
>>> On 5/3/2017 5:26 AM, Will Deacon wrote:
>>>> [adding some /dev/mem fans to cc]
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, May 02, 2017 at 02:28:05PM -0600, Sameer Goel wrote:
>>>>> Port architecture specific xlate and unxlate functions for /dev/mem
>>>>> read/write. This sets up the mapping for a valid physical address if a
>>>>> kernel direct mapping is not already present.
>>>>>
>>>>> This is a generic issue as a user space app should not be allowed to crash
>>>>> the kernel.
>>>>
>>>>> This issue was observed when systemd tried to access performance
>>>>> pointer record from the FPDT table.
>>>>
>>>> Why is it doing that? Is there not a way to get this via /sys?
>>>
>>> There is no ACPI FPDT implementation in the kernel, so the userspace
>>> systemd code is getting the FPDT table contents from /sys
>>> and parsing the entries. The performance pointer record is a
>>> reserved address populated by UEFI and the userspace code tries to
>>> access it using /dev/mem. The physical address is valid, so cannot
>>> push back on the user space code.
>>
>> OK, so then we need to add support for parsing this table in the
>> kernel and exposing the referred-to regions in a controllable fashion.
>> Maybe something that belongs under /sys/firmware/efi (adding Matt), or
>> maybe something that deserves its own driver.
>>
>> The only two use-cases for /dev/mem on arm64 are:
>> - Implementing interfaces in the kernel takes up-front effort.
>> - Being able to accidentally panic the kernel from userland.
>>
> We will see this issue with any access using /dev/mem to a MEMBLOCK_NOMAP marked
> memblock. The kernel crash issue has to be fixed irrespective of ACPI FPDT support.
>

I reported the same issue a couple of weeks ago [0]. So while we all
agree that such accesses shouldn't oops the kernel, I think we may
disagree on whether such accesses should be allowed in the first
place, especially when using read/write on /dev/mem (as opposed to
mmap())

One the UEFI/EDK2 side, there are two fundamental issues here, which
we should resolve:
- The use of EfiRuntimeServicesData for such regions: these tables
have no significance to the firmware itself (not after
ExitBootServices()) anyway, and so the only reason for choosing this
memory type is that they are guaranteed to be left untouched by the
OS. Also, using this type rather than something like 'ACPI Reclaim'
results in the memory to be occupied regardless of whether you
understand cq. are interested in its contents, which is something we
usually try to avoid in UEFI.
- The unconditional use of the EFI_MEMORY_RUNTIME attribute for
EfiRuntimeServicesData regions, which requests the OS to create a
runtime mapping for it in the OS page tables. We should be able to
take this attribute as a cue that the firmware has no interest in its
contents (given that it never requested a mapping for it) making it
safe for the OS to map it with any attributes it likes. However, EDK2
currently does not provide this facility, i.e., the EFI_MEMORY_RUNTIME
bit is always set.

So modulo the feedback on my patch, I think that approach is
preferred, and we should really look into cleaning this up further on
the firmware side. For now, the userland fix is to use mmap() rather
than read() (which is already documented in the code as something that
should not be relied upon to remain available indefinitely).

[0] http://marc.info/?l=linux-arm-kernel&m=149198561609050