Re: [PATCH] sched/x86: Save [ER]FLAGS on context switch

H. Peter Anvin
2019-02-20T22:56:38Z

On 2/19/19 4:48 AM, Will Deacon wrote:
>
> I think you'll still hate this, but could we not disable preemption during
> the uaccess-enabled region, re-enabling it on the fault path after we've
> toggled uaccess off and disable it again when we return back to the
> uaccess-enabled region? Doesn't help with tracing, but it should at least
> handle the common case.
>

There is a worse problem with this, I still realize: this would mean blocking
preemption across what could possibly be a *very* large copy_from_user(), for
example.

Exceptions *have* to handle this; there is no way around it. Perhaps the
scheduler isn't the right place to put these kinds of asserts, either.

Now, __fentry__ is kind of a special beast; in some ways it is an "exception
implemented as a function call"; on x86 one could even consider using an INT
instruction in order to reduce the NOP footprint in the unarmed case. Nor is
__fentry__ a C function; it has far more of an exception-like ABI.
*Regardless* of what else we do, I believe __fentry__ ought to
save/disable/restore AC, just like an exception does.

The idea of using s/a gcc plugin/objtool/ for this isn't really a bad idea.
Obviously the general problem is undecidable :) but the enforcement of some
simple, fairly draconian rules ("as tight as possible, but no tighter")
shouldn't be a huge problem.

An actual gcc plugin -- which would probably be quite complex -- could make
gcc itself aware of user space accesses and be able to rearrange them to
minimize STAC/CLAC and avoid kernel-space accesses inside those brackets.

Finally, of course, there is the option of simply outlawing this practice as a
matter of policy and require that all structures be accessed through a limited
set of APIs. As I recall, the number of places where there were
performance-critical regions which could not use the normal accessors are
fairly small (signal frames being the main one.) Doing bulk copy to/from
kernel memory and then accessing them from there would have some performance
cost, but would eliminate the need for this complexity entirely.

-hpa