linux-kernel - Re: x86-64: Maintain 16-byte stack alignment

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Date:   Wed, 11 Jan 2017 23:51:10 -0800
From:   Andy Lutomirski <luto@...capital.net>
To:     Herbert Xu <herbert@...dor.apana.org.au>
Cc:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux Crypto Mailing List <linux-crypto@...r.kernel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheuvel@...aro.org>
Subject: Re: x86-64: Maintain 16-byte stack alignment

On Wed, Jan 11, 2017 at 11:05 PM, Herbert Xu
<herbert@...dor.apana.org.au> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 10, 2017 at 09:05:28AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>>
>> I'm pretty sure we have random asm code that may not maintain a
>> 16-byte stack alignment when it calls other code (including, in some
>> cases, calling C code).
>>
>> So I'm not at all convinced that this is a good idea. We shouldn't
>> expect 16-byte alignment to be something trustworthy.
>
> So what if we audited all the x86 assembly code to fix this? Would
> it then be acceptable to do a 16-byte aligned stack?
>
> On the face of it it doesn't seem to be a huge amount of code
> assuming they mostly live under arch/x86.

The problem is that we have nasties like TRACE_IRQS_OFF.  Performance
doesn't really matter for these macros, so we could probably rig up a
helper for forcibly align the stack there.  Maybe
FRAME_BEGIN_FORCE_ALIGN?  I also think I'd rather not to modify
pt_regs.  We should just fix the small number of code paths that
create a pt_regs and then call into C code to align the stack.

But if we can't do this with automatic verification, then I'm not sure
I want to do it at all.  The asm is already more precarious than I'd
like, and having a code path that is misaligned is asking for obscure
bugs down the road.

--Andy