linux-kernel - Re: [RFC] raw_copy_from

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Date:   Sun, 19 Jul 2020 12:28:13 -0700
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>
Cc:     linux-arch <linux-arch@...r.kernel.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC] raw_copy_from_user() semantics

On Sat, Jul 18, 2020 at 8:17 PM Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk> wrote:
>
>         So any byte-squeezing loop of that sort would break on a bunch
> of architectures.

I think we should try to get rid of the exact semantics.

If "copy_from/to_user()" takes a fault because it does a
larger-than-byte access (and with unrolling, it could be a _lot_
larger than one byte: x86 dcurrently has that "generic" case that
isn't used very much, but it unrolls 8-byte accesses 8 times, so it
does a 64-byte block that we could just say "if any fo those didn't
work, then you're done), then the copy failed. The exact number of
bytes we _could_ have copied is not important.

So we could simplify the x86 end condition too and remove all the
"handle_tail" complexity.

                  Linus

(*) Yes, it aligns things to 64-byte boundaries too, but only for the
write side, not the read side.