Re: [RFC PATCH v2 1/2] rseq: x86: implement abort-at-ip extension

Christian Brauner
2022-01-12T14:55:53Z

On Wed, Jan 12, 2022 at 09:47:29AM -0500, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> ----- On Jan 12, 2022, at 3:46 AM, Christian Brauner christian.brauner@ubuntu.com wrote:
>
> > On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 12:43:05PM -0500, Mathieu Desnoyers wrote:
> [...]
> >> >> + *
> >> >> + * rseq critical sections defined with the RSEQ_CS_FLAG_ABORT_AT_IP flag
> >> >> + * have the following behavior on abort: when the stack grows down: the
> >> >> + * stack pointer is decremented to skip the redzone, and decremented of
> >> >> + * the pointer size. The aborted address (abort-at-ip) is stored at
> >> >> + * this stack pointer location. The user-space abort handler needs to
> >> >> + * pop the abort-at-ip address from the stack, and add the redzone size
> >> >> + * to the stack pointer.
> >> >> + *
> >> >> + * TODO: describe stack grows up.
> >> >
> >> > Is this intentional or did you forget? :)
> >>
> >> Since I did not implement abort-at-ip on stack-grows-up architectures, I felt
> >> it would be too early to describe the algorithm. I can simply remove the TODO
> >> altogether and we'll take care of it when we get there ? If I had to try to
> >> wordsmith it, it would look like e.g.:
> >>
> >> * [...] When the stack grows up: the
> >> * stack pointer is incremented to skip the redzone, and incremented of
> >> * the pointer size. The aborted address (abort-at-ip) is stored immediately
> >> * under this stack pointer location. The user-space abort handler needs to
> >> * pop the abort-at-ip address from the stack, and subtract the redzone size
> >> * from the stack pointer.
> >>
> >> [ Please let me know if I got somehow confused in my understanding of stack
> >> grows
> >> up architectures. ]
> >>
> >> I'm also unsure whether any of the stack grows up architecture have redzones ?
> >
> > I don't think so? From when I last touched that piece of arch code when
> > massaging copy_thread() I only remember parisc as having an upwards
> > growing stack.
> >
> >> From a quick grep for redzone in Linux arch/, only openrisc, powerpc64 and
> > > x86-64 appear to have redzones.
>
> I figured it was kind of silly to special-case arch-agnostic comments for stack
> grows up/down, how about the following instead ?
>
> * rseq critical sections defined with the RSEQ_CS_FLAG_ABORT_AT_IP flag
> * have the following behavior on abort: the stack pointer is adjusted to
> * skip over the redzone [*], and the aborted address (abort-at-ip) is pushed
> * at this stack pointer location. The user-space abort handler needs to pop
> * the abort-at-ip address from the stack, and adjust the stack pointer to skip
> * back over the redzone.
> *
> * [*] The openrisc, powerpc64 and x86-64 architectures define a "redzone" as a
> * stack area beyond the stack pointer which can be used by the compiler
> * to store local variables in leaf functions.

Sounds good to me.