Re: [PATCH 5/7] x86/mm/init: remove freed kernel image areas from alias mapping

Dave Hansen
2018-08-06T15:18:05Z

On 08/04/2018 02:38 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 2, 2018 at 3:58 PM, Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com> wrote:
>> This otherwise unused alias mapping of the holes will, by default
>> keep the Global bit, be mapped out to userspace, and be
>> vulnerable to Meltdown.
>>
>> Remove the alias mapping of these pages entirely. This is likely
>> to fracture the 2M page mapping the kernel image near these areas,
>> but this should affect a minority of the area.
...
>
> I like this patch, and I tend to think we should (eventually) enable
> it regardless of PTI. Cleaning up the memory map is generally a good
> thing.
>
> Also, just to make sure I fully understand: the kernel text is aliased
> in both the direct map and the high map, right?

Yes. I don't think the double mapping was because of anything that we
really intentionally designed, though. I think it was just easiest to
leave it in place and it didn't hurt anything.

> This means that we should be able to make the high kernel mapping
> have proper RO permissions very early without breaking text_poke() at
> the minor cost of needing to force a serializing instruction at the
> end of each big block of text pokes. I think this would be
> worthwhile, although I suspect we'll uncover *tons* of bugs in the
> process.

Yeah, this could easily happen much earlier.