linux-kernel - Re: [tip:perfcounters/core] perf_counter: x86: Fix call-chain support to use NMI-safe methods

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Date:	Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:11:15 -0700 (PDT)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	mingo@...hat.com, hpa@...or.com, mathieu.desnoyers@...ymtl.ca,
	paulus@...ba.org, acme@...hat.com, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	a.p.zijlstra@...llo.nl, penberg@...helsinki.fi,
	vegard.nossum@...il.com, efault@....de, jeremy@...p.org,
	npiggin@...e.de, tglx@...utronix.de, mingo@...e.hu
cc:	linux-tip-commits@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [tip:perfcounters/core] perf_counter: x86: Fix call-chain support
 to use NMI-safe methods

On Mon, 15 Jun 2009, tip-bot for Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> 
> __copy_from_user_inatomic() isn't NMI safe in that it can trigger
> the page fault handler which is another trap and its return path
> invokes IRET which will also close the NMI context.

That's not the only problem.

An even more fundamental problem is that the page fault handler is not 
re-entrant because of simple the value in %cr2. So regardless of any 
'iret' issues, you *CANNOT* take a page fault in an NMI, because the NMI 
might happen while we're in the critical region of having taken another 
page fault, but before we've saved off the value of %cr2 in that old page 
fault.

If the NMI handler causes a page fault, it will corrupt the %cr2 of the 
outer page fault. That's why the page fault is done with an interrupt 
gate, and why we have that conditional local_irq_enable() in it.

So page faults are fundamentally only safe wrt normal interrupts, not NMI.

		Linus
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