Date:   Thu, 28 Jun 2018 13:39:45 -0700
From:   hpa@...or.com
To:     Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
CC:     "H. Peter Anvin" <h.peter.anvin@...el.com>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...ux.intel.com>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        "Bae, Chang Seok" <chang.seok.bae@...el.com>,
        "Metzger, Markus T" <markus.t.metzger@...el.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 1/7] x86/ldt: refresh %fs and %gs in refresh_ldt_segments()

On June 28, 2018 1:33:24 PM PDT, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org> wrote:
>On Wed, Jun 27, 2018 at 11:22 AM,  <hpa@...or.com> wrote:
>> On June 27, 2018 11:19:12 AM PDT, Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
>wrote:
>>>On Fri, Jun 22, 2018 at 11:47 AM, Andy Lutomirski
><luto@...capital.net>
>>>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> On Jun 22, 2018, at 11:29 AM, H. Peter Anvin
>>><h.peter.anvin@...el.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On 06/22/18 07:24, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> That RPL3 part is false.  The following program does:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> #include <stdio.h>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> int main()
>>>>>> {
>>>>>>    unsigned short sel;
>>>>>>    asm volatile ("mov %%ss, %0" : "=rm" (sel));
>>>>>>    sel &= ~3;
>>>>>>    printf("Will write 0x%hx to GS\n", sel);
>>>>>>    asm volatile ("mov %0, %%gs" :: "rm" (sel & ~3));
>>>>>>    asm volatile ("mov %%gs, %0" : "=rm" (sel));
>>>>>>    printf("GS = 0x%hx\n", sel);
>>>>>>    return 0;
>>>>>> }
>>>>>>
>>>>>> prints:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Will write 0x28 to GS
>>>>>> GS = 0x28
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The x86 architecture is *insane*.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Other than that, this patch seems generally sensible.  But my
>>>>>> objection that it's incorrect with FSGSBASE enabled for %fs and
>%gs
>>>>>> still applies.
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Ugh, you're right... I misremembered.  The CPL simply overrides
>the
>>>RPL
>>>>> rather than trapping.
>>>>>
>>>>> We still need to give legacy applications which have zero idea
>about
>>>the
>>>>> separate bases that apply only to 64-bit mode a way to DTRT.
>>>Requiring
>>>>> these old crufty applications to do something new is not an
>option.
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> As ugly as it is, I'm thinking the Right Thing is to simply make
>it
>>>a
>>>>> part of the Linux ABI that if the FS or GS selector registers
>point
>>>into
>>>>> the LDT then we will requalify them; if a 64-bit app does that
>then
>>>they
>>>>> get that behavior.  This isn't something that will happen
>>>>> asynchronously, and if a 64-bit process loads an LDT value into FS
>>>or
>>>>> GS, they are considered to have opted in to that behavior.
>>>>
>>>> But the old and crusty apps don’t depend on requalification because
>>>we never used to do it.
>>>>
>>>> I’m not convinced we ever need to refresh the base. In fact, we
>could
>>>start preserving the base of LDT-referencing FS/GS across context
>>>switches even without FSGSBASE at some minor performance cost, but I
>>>don’t really see the point. I still think my proposed semantics are
>>>easy to implement and preserve the ABI even if they have the sad
>>>property that the FSGSBASE behavior and the non-FSGSBASE behavior end
>>>up different.
>>>>
>>>
>>>There's another reasonable solution: do exactly what your patch does,
>>>minus the bugs.  We would need to get the RPL != 3 case right (easy)
>>>and the case where there's a non-running thread using the selector in
>>>question.  The latter is probably best handled by adding a flag to
>>>thread_struct that says "fsbase needs reloading from the descriptor
>>>table" and only applies if the selector is in the LDT or TLS area. 
>Or
>>>we could hijack a high bit in the selector.  Then we'd need to update
>>>everything that uses the fields.
>>
>> Obviously fix the bugs.
>>
>> How would you control this bit?
>
>Sorry, I was wrong in my previous email.  Let me try this again:
>
>Notwithstanding the RPL thing, the reason I don't like your patch as
>is, and the reason I didn't write a similar patch myself, is that it
>will behave nondeterministically on an FSGSBASE kernel.  Suppose there
>are two threads, A and B, that share an mm.  A has %fs == 0x7 and
>FSBASE = 0.  The LDT has the base for entry 0 set to 0.
>
>Now thread B calls modify_ldt to change the base for entry 0 to 1.
>
>The Obviously Sane (tm) behavior is for task A's FSBASE to
>asynchronously change to 1.  This is the only deterministic behavior
>that is even possible on a 32-bit kernel, and it's the only
>not-totally-nutty behavior that is possible on a 64-bit non-FSGSBASE
>kernel, and it's still perfectly reasonable for FSGSBASE.  The problem
>is that it's not so easly to implement.
>
>With your patch, on an FSGSBASE kernel, we get the desired behavior if
>thread A is running while thread B calls modify_ldt().  But we get
>different behavior if thread A is stopped -- thread A's FSBASE will
>remain set to 0.
>
>With that in mind, my email was otherwise garbage, and the magic "bit"
>idea was total crap.
>
>I can see three vaguely credible ways to implement this.
>
>1. thread B walks all threads on the system, notices that thread A has
>the same mm, and asynchronously fixes it up.  The locking is a bit
>tricky, and the performance isn't exactly great.  Maybe that's okay.
>
>2. We finally add an efficient way to find all threads that share an
>mm and do (1) but faster.
>
>3. We add enough bookkeeping to thread_struct so that, the next time
>thread A runs or has ptrace try to read its FSBASE, we notice that
>FSBASE is stale and fix it up.
>
>(3) will perform the best, but the implementation is probably nasty.
>If we want modify_ldt() to only reset the base for the modified
>records, we probably need a version number for each of the 8192
>possible LDT entries stored in ldt_struct (which will double its size,
>but so what?).  Then we need thread_struct to store the version number
>of the LDT entries that fsindex and gsindex refer to.  Now we make
>sure that every code path that reads fsbase or gsbase first calls some
>revalidate_fs_and_gs() function that will reset the bases and maybe
>even the selectors if needed.  Getting the locking right on that last
>bit is possibly a bit tricky, since we may need the LDT lock to be
>held across the revalidation *and* whatever subsequent code actually
>reads the values.
>
>I think that (3) is the nicest solution, but it would need to be
>implemeted.
>
>What do you think?

Ok, now I grok what you're getting at, and I do agree with your problem statement. I think I can figure this out.
-- 
Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.

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