Re: [PATCH RFC] uaccess: user_access_begin_after_access_ok()

Michael S. Tsirkin
2020-06-02T20:42:13Z

On Tue, Jun 02, 2020 at 05:30:48PM +0100, Al Viro wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 02, 2020 at 04:45:05AM -0400, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > So vhost needs to poke at userspace *a lot* in a quick succession. It
> > is thus benefitial to enable userspace access, do our thing, then
> > disable. Except access_ok has already been pre-validated with all the
> > relevant nospec checks, so we don't need that. Add an API to allow
> > userspace access after access_ok and barrier_nospec are done.
>
> This is the wrong way to do it, and this API is certain to be abused
> elsewhere. NAK - we need to sort out vhost-related problems, but
> this is not an acceptable solution. Sorry.

OK so summarizing what you and Linus both said, we need at
least a way to make sure access_ok (and preferably the barrier too)
is not missed.

Another comment is about actually checking that performance impact
is significant and worth the complexity and risk.

Is that a fair summary?

I'm actually thinking it's doable with a new __unsafe_user type of
pointer, sparse will then catch errors for us.

--
MST