Skip to content

vsyscall tweaks

Andy Lutomirski lkml 1 version In review

Get series with b4
b4 am [email protected]

Versions newest first

  1. v1 Latest4 patches 5 repliesIn review

Changes from RFC v2 from the cover letter

- Fix some more int 0xcc references.
- Add patches 2-4.

Patches in v1 No applies recorded yet

#Subject and filesSizeRepliesApplied
1/4x86-64: Allow emulated vsyscalls from user addressesarch/x86/include/asm/irq_vectors.h arch/x86/include/asm/traps.h arch/x86/kernel/entry_64.S +3 more+95 -762 replies
2/4x86: Remove unnecessary compile flag tweaks for vsyscall codearch/x86/kernel/Makefile arch/x86/kernel/vsyscall_64.c+0 -160 replies
3/4x86-64: Wire up getcpu syscallarch/x86/include/asm/unistd_64.h+2 -00 replies
4/4Add vsyscalls to feature-removal-schedule.txtDocumentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt+14 -03 replies

Reviews trailers per patch

No Reviewed-by, Acked-by or Tested-by trailers for v1 yet.

Read the v1 thread

Cover letter [PATCH 0/4] vsyscall tweaks

With the new vsyscall emulation code, int 0xcc's behavior depends on where it is called from. A few dynamic instrumentation tools cleverly copy the instruction out of the vsyscall page and execute it, resulting in a segfault. This is nothing new: sysenter would die in a similar way (unless the code got lucky). The only examples I know of are pin and DynamoRIO -- valgrind is already smart enough not to recompile vsyscalls 0 and 1 and "smart" enough to crash unconditionally on vsyscall 2. I can't test pin because it refuses to run on newfangled things like Linux 3.0+ (and I don't want to muck with my kernel version to run a program that's broken anyway). Patch 1 in this series fixes DynamoRIO in limited testing.

Bug reports against valgrind and DynamoRIO exist, and I haven't managed to get permission to post to pin's message board yet.

The other three patches are minor. Patch 2 removes compile flags that are now unnecessary because vsyscall_64.c does not get called in user mode. Patch 3 wires up the getcpu syscall on x86-64 as further encouragement to stop using the vsyscall. Patch 4 adds a feature-removal-schedule.txt entry suggesting that vsyscalls might be disabled in some configurations some day.

x86 maintainers / Linus: feel free to drop any of patches 2-4. I think the getcpu syscall should be added, though, since it's rather odd to have a "syscall" in the vdso and the vsyscall page that can't be called the old-fashioned way.

Changes from RFC v2:
- Fix some more int 0xcc references.
- Add patches 2-4.

Andy Lutomirski (4):
x86-64: Allow emulated vsyscalls from user addresses
x86: Remove unnecessary compile flag tweaks for vsyscall code
x86-64: Wire up getcpu syscall
Add vsyscalls to feature-removal-schedule.txt

 Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt |   14 +++
 arch/x86/include/asm/irq_vectors.h         |   11 ++-
 arch/x86/include/asm/traps.h               |    8 ++-
 arch/x86/include/asm/unistd_64.h           |    2 +
 arch/x86/kernel/Makefile                   |   13 ---
 arch/x86/kernel/entry_64.S                 |    4 +-
 arch/x86/kernel/traps.c                    |   14 +++-
 arch/x86/kernel/vsyscall_64.c              |  131 ++++++++++++++--------------
 arch/x86/kernel/vsyscall_emu_64.S          |    6 +-
 9 files changed, 111 insertions(+), 92 deletions(-)
Signature · 1 line
1.7.6