linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH v8 1/3] x86: Expand exception table to allow new handling options

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Date:	Mon, 11 Jan 2016 18:09:46 -0500
From:	Brian Gerst <brgerst@...il.com>
To:	Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
Cc:	Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
	Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>, X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>,
	"linux-mm@...ck.org" <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
	Robert <elliott@....com>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	Tony Luck <tony.luck@...el.com>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
	"linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux-nvdimm <linux-nvdimm@...1.01.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v8 1/3] x86: Expand exception table to allow new handling options

On Sat, Jan 9, 2016 at 1:36 AM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net> wrote:
> On Jan 8, 2016 8:31 PM, "Brian Gerst" <brgerst@...il.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 10:39 PM, Brian Gerst <brgerst@...il.com> wrote:
>> > On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 8:52 PM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net> wrote:
>> >> On Fri, Jan 8, 2016 at 12:49 PM, Tony Luck <tony.luck@...el.com> wrote:
>> >>> Huge amounts of help from  Andy Lutomirski and Borislav Petkov to
>> >>> produce this. Andy provided the inspiration to add classes to the
>> >>> exception table with a clever bit-squeezing trick, Boris pointed
>> >>> out how much cleaner it would all be if we just had a new field.
>> >>>
>> >>> Linus Torvalds blessed the expansion with:
>> >>>   I'd rather not be clever in order to save just a tiny amount of space
>> >>>   in the exception table, which isn't really criticial for anybody.
>> >>>
>> >>> The third field is a simple integer indexing into an array of handler
>> >>> functions (I thought it couldn't be a relative pointer like the other
>> >>> fields because a module may have its ex_table loaded more than 2GB away
>> >>> from the handler function - but that may not be actually true. But the
>> >>> integer is pretty flexible, we are only really using low two bits now).
>> >>>
>> >>> We start out with three handlers:
>> >>>
>> >>> 0: Legacy - just jumps the to fixup IP
>> >>> 1: Fault - provide the trap number in %ax to the fixup code
>> >>> 2: Cleaned up legacy for the uaccess error hack
>> >>
>> >> I think I preferred the relative function pointer approach.
>> >>
>> >> Also, I think it would be nicer if the machine check code would invoke
>> >> the handler regardless of which handler (or class) is selected.  Then
>> >> the handlers that don't want to handle #MC can just reject them.
>> >>
>> >> Also, can you make the handlers return bool instead of int?
>> >
>> > I'm hashing up an idea that could eliminate alot of text in the .fixup
>> > section, but it needs the integer handler method to work.  We have
>> > alot of fixup code that does "mov $-EFAULT, reg; jmp xxxx".  If we
>> > encode the register in the third word, the handler can be generic and
>> > no fixup code for each user access would be needed.  That would
>> > recover alot of the memory used by expanding the exception table.
>>
>> On second thought, this could still be implemented with a relative
>> function pointer.  We'd just need a separate function for each
>> register.
>>
>
> If we could get gcc to play along (which, IIRC, it already can for
> __put_user), we can do much better with jump labels -- the fixup
> target would be a jump label.
>
> Even without that, how about using @cc?  Do:
>
> clc
> mov whatever, wherever
>
> The fixup sets the carry flag and skips the faulting instruction
> (either by knowing the length or by decoding it), and the inline asm
> causes gcc to emit jc to the error logic.
>
> --Andy

I agree that for at least put_user() using asm goto would be an even
better option.  get_user() on the other hand, will be much messier to
deal with, since asm goto statements can't have outputs, plus it
zeroes the output register on fault.

--
Brian Gerst