powerpc: Never handle VSX alignment exceptions from kernel

The VSX alignment handler needs to write out the existing VSX state to memory before operating on it (flush_vsx_to_thread()). If we take a VSX alignment exception in the kernel bad things will happen. It looks like we could write the kernel state out to the user process, or we could handle the kernel exception using data from the user process (depending if MSR_VSX is set or not).

Worse still, if the code to read or write the VSX state causes an alignment exception, we will recurse forever. I ended up with hundreds of megabytes of kernel stack to look through as a result.

Floating point and SPE code have similar issues but already include a user check. Add the same check to emulate_vsx().

---

Index: b/arch/powerpc/kernel/align.c
===================================================================
@@ -651,6 +651,10 @@ static int emulate_vsx(unsigned char __u
 	int sw = 0;
 	int i, j;
 
+	/* userland only */
+	if (unlikely(!user_mode(regs)))
+		return 0;
+
 	flush_vsx_to_thread(current);
 
 	if (reg < 32)

Can you say what will happen when you apply this patch. ie It produces one oops rather than megabytes of crap making it easier to debug.

Also, can you give a clue as to how you can hit this since it should never happen in the first place. I assume it's some LE corner case...

Mikey

Hi,

Good point, updated.

While it was found on LE, after reading the POWER7 docs I think we can hit it pretty easily on BE. All it takes is a 4 byte aligned VSX load or store. Misaligning the FPR array in the thread struct would be enough to do it and we'd end up scribbling over memory until we self destruct.

Anton
--

The VSX alignment handler needs to write out the existing VSX state to memory before operating on it (flush_vsx_to_thread()). If we take a VSX alignment exception in the kernel bad things will happen. It looks like we could write the kernel state out to the user process, or we could handle the kernel exception using data from the user process (depending if MSR_VSX is set or not).

Worse still, if the code to read or write the VSX state causes an alignment exception, we will recurse forever. I ended up with hundreds of megabytes of kernel stack to look through as a result.

Floating point and SPE code have similar issues but already include a user check. Add the same check to emulate_vsx().

With this patch any unaligned VSX loads and stores in the kernel will show up as a clear oops rather than silent corruption of kernel or userspace VSX state, or worse, corruption of a potentially unlimited amount of kernel memory.

---

Index: b/arch/powerpc/kernel/align.c
===================================================================
@@ -651,6 +651,10 @@ static int emulate_vsx(unsigned char __u
 	int sw = 0;
 	int i, j;
 
+	/* userland only */
+	if (unlikely(!user_mode(regs)))
+		return 0;
+
 	flush_vsx_to_thread(current);
 
 	if (reg < 32)