Re: [PATCH 4/6] arm64: pmu: Add hook to handle pmu-related undefined instructions

Peter Zijlstra
2019-05-17T08:27:03Z

On Fri, May 17, 2019 at 09:04:20AM +0100, Mark Rutland wrote:

> Remember that this is in an undefined (trap) handler.
>
> If userspace _attempts_ to write to the registers, the CPU will trap to the
> kernel. The comment is perhaps misleading; when we "do nothing", the common
> trap handling code will send a SIGILL to userspace.
>
> It would probably be better to say something like:
>
> /*
> * If userspace is tries to read a counter that doesn't exist on this
> * CPU, we emulate it as reading as zero. This happens if userspace is
> * preempted between reading the idx and actually reading the counter,
> * and the seqlock and idx have already changed, so it's as-if the
> * counter has been reprogrammed with a different event.

Might be good to mention that userspace will/should discard the value it
reads, and therefore any value is good (including 0).

> * We don't permit userspace to write to these registers, and will
> * inject a SIGILL.
> */
>
> There is one caveat: userspace can write to PMSELR without trapping, so we will
> have to context-switch with the task. That only affects indirect addressing of
> PMU registers, and doesn't have a functional effect on the behaviour of the
> PMU, so that's benign from the PoV of perf.

Sad though; ideally you'd state that indirect addressing is
out-of-bounds and they get to keep the pieces. But I suspect you're
right that people will do it anyway and complain once it comes apart.