Re: [patch 02/38] x86/cpu: Use native_wrmsrl() in load_percpu_segment()

Thomas Gleixner
2022-07-18T11:42:59Z

On Mon, Jul 18 2022 at 12:33, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 18 2022 at 11:31, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 10:55:29AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>>> On Mon, Jul 18 2022 at 08:54, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
>>> > On Mon, Jul 18 2022 at 07:11, Juergen Gross wrote:
>>> >>> - switch_to_new_gdt(cpu);
>>> >>> + switch_to_real_gdt(cpu);
>>> >>
>>> >> ... can't you use the paravirt variant of load_gdt in switch_to_real_gdt() ?
>>> >
>>> > That does not solve the problem of having a disagreement between GDT and
>>> > GS_BASE. Let me dig into this some more.
>>>
>>> Bah. The real problem is __loadsegment_simple(gs, 0). After that GS_BASE
>>> is 0. So any per CPU access before setting MSR_GS_BASE back to working
>>> state is going into lala land.
>>>
>>> So it's not the GDT. It's the mov 0, %gs which makes stuff go south, but
>>> as %gs is already 0, we can keep the paravirt load_gdt() and use
>>> native_write_msr() and everything should be happy.
>>
>> How is the ret from xen_load_gdt() not going to explode?
>
> This is only for the early boot _before_ all the patching happens. So
> that goes through the default retthunk.
>
> Secondary CPUs do not need that as they set up GDT and GS_BASE in the
> low level asm code before coming out to C.
>
> I'm still trying to figure out how this works on XENPV and on 32bit.

On 32bit the CPU comes out with GDT and FS correctly set too.

For XEN_PV it looks like cpu_initialize_context() hands down GDT and
GSBASE info to the hypercall which kicks the CPU so we should be
good there as well. Emphasis on should. Jürgen?

Thanks,

tglx