netdev - Re: [PATCH 14/18] maccess: allow architectures to provide kernel probing directly

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Date:   Wed, 13 May 2020 21:54:56 +0200
From:   Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>
To:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
Cc:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@....de>,
        the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>,
        Alexei Starovoitov <ast@...nel.org>,
        Daniel Borkmann <daniel@...earbox.net>,
        Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        linux-parisc@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-um <linux-um@...ts.infradead.org>,
        Netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>, bpf@...r.kernel.org,
        Linux-MM <linux-mm@...ck.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH 14/18] maccess: allow architectures to provide kernel
 probing directly

On Wed, May 13, 2020 at 12:48:54PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Looking at the current users of "probe_kernel_read()", it looks like
> it's almost mostly things that just want a single byte or word.
> 
> It's not 100% that: we definitely do several things that want the
> "copy" semantics vs the "get" semantics: on the x86 side we have
> CALL_INSN_SIZE and MAX_INSN_SIZE, and the ldttss_desc.
> 
> But the bulk of them do seem to be a single value.
> 
> I don't know if performance really matters here, but to me the whole
> "most users seem to want to read a single value" is what makes me
> think that maybe that should be the primary model, rather than have
> the copy model be the primary one and then we implement the single
> value case (badly) with a copy.
> 
> It probably doesn't matter that much. I certainly wouldn't hold this
> series up over it - it can be a future thing.

I can make the get_kernel_nofault implementation suck a little less :)

Note that the arch helper (we could call it unsafe_get_kernel_nofault)
we still need to have a pagefault_disable / pagefault_enable pair
around the calls.  So maybe keep the get_kernel_nofault interface
as-is (without the goto label), and prepare the arch helpers for
being used similar to unsafe_get_user once all architectures are
converted.  And I can throw in a few patches to convert callers
from the copy semantics to the get semantics.