linux-kernel - Re: Should this_cpu

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Tue, 11 Dec 2018 09:11:17 -0800
From:   Nadav Amit <nadav.amit@...il.com>
To:     Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
Cc:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>,
        Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@...e.cz>,
        Linux-MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, X86 ML <x86@...nel.org>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>
Subject: Re: Should this_cpu_read() be volatile?

> On Dec 10, 2018, at 12:55 AM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, Dec 09, 2018 at 04:57:43PM -0800, Nadav Amit wrote:
>>> On Dec 8, 2018, at 2:52 AM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org> wrote:
> 
>>> My patch proposed here:
>>> 
>>> https://marc.info/?l=linux-mm&m=154409548410209
>>> 
>>> would actually fix that one I think, preempt_count() uses
>>> raw_cpu_read_4() which will loose the volatile with that patch.
> 
>> I tested the patch you referenced, and it certainly improves the situation
>> for reads, but there are still small and big issues lying around.
> 
> I'm sure :-(, this has been 'festering' for a long while it seems. And
> esp. on x86 specific code, where for a long time we all assumed the
> various per-cpu APIs were in fact the same (which turns out to very much
> not be true).
> 
>> The biggest one is that (I think) smp_processor_id() should apparently use
>> __this_cpu_read().
> 
> Agreed, and note that this will also improve code generation on !x86.
> 
> However, I'm not sure the current !debug definition:
> 
> #define smp_processor_id() raw_smp_processor_id()
> 
> is actually correct. Where raw_smp_processor_id() must be
> this_cpu_read() to avoid CSE, we actually want to allow CSE on
> smp_processor_id() etc..

Yes. That makes sense.

> 
>> There are all kind of other smaller issues, such as set_irq_regs() and
>> get_irq_regs(), which should run with disabled interrupts. They affect the
>> generated code in do_IRQ() and others.
>> 
>> But beyond that, there are so many places in the code that use
>> this_cpu_read() while IRQs are guaranteed to be disabled. For example
>> arch/x86/mm/tlb.c is full with this_cpu_read/write() and almost(?) all
>> should be running with interrupts disabled. Having said that, in my build
>> only flush_tlb_func_common() was affected.
> 
> This all feels like something static analysis could help with; such
> tools would also make sense for !x86 where the difference between the
> various per-cpu accessors is even bigger.

If something like that existed, it could also allow to get rid of
local_irq_save() (and use local_irq_disable() instead).