linux-kernel - Re: [RFC] x86: xsave/xrstor support, ucontext

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Date:	Fri, 23 May 2008 00:36:48 +0200
From:	Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@...uu.se>
To:	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Cc:	Suresh Siddha <suresh.b.siddha@...el.com>,
	Mikael Pettersson <mikpe@...uu.se>,
	Andi Kleen <andi@...stfloor.org>, mingo@...e.hu,
	tglx@...utronix.de, torvalds@...ux-foundation.org,
	akpm@...ux-foundation.org, roland@...hat.com, drepper@...hat.com,
	Hongjiu.lu@...el.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	arjan@...ux.intel.com, rmk+lkml@....linux.org.uk, dan@...ian.org,
	asit.k.mallick@...el.com
Subject: Re: [RFC] x86: xsave/xrstor support, ucontext_t extensions

H. Peter Anvin writes:
 > Suresh Siddha wrote:
 > > 
 > > hpa, What is the virtualization problem? Are you referring to perf problem?
 > > As you noted, regular non-rt signal handlers won't need this cpuid check. It's
 > > needed only for those who manually look at non-rt signal frames and interpret it.
 > > And also, they can do this check only once and not everytime.
 > > 
 > 
 > No, relying on CPUID and vdso both have implications for virtualization.
 > 
 > > To me, prtcl() just seems to be an overkill.
 > 
 > I don't think it is ... it's not overkill but rather "underkill"... it's 
 > a low-performance solution but it's guaranteed to be safe in the 
 > presence of virtualization of all its various ilk.  Note that you don't 
 > need to be able to *set* the format via prctl(), just *query* (get) it.

I agree. It works, user-space only needs to query it once, so it's not
a big deal that it's a syscall. Admittedly a sigcontext flag would have
been better, but that doesn't seem to be viable.

 > > While restoring from the user, kernel also need to find out what layout
 > > the user is passing. So it's bi-directional. I prefer the same mechanism
 > > (using cookies/magic numbers etc inaddition to uc_flags or cpuid checks) to
 > > interpret the fpstate for both user/kernel.
 > 
 > No, it really doesn't: the kernel only needs to be able to read the same 
 > format as it itself wrote.

The kernel needs to accept one(*) of the formats it can produce, which
is not necessarily what it last produced. It's not inconceivable that
user-space will construct sigframes on the fly (to emulate setcontext),
or that it will mangle sigframes (e.g. to map non-rt to rt before sigreturn).

(*) The format is determined by which version of sys_sigreturn the
user invokes.

/Mikael
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