This all started about 6 month ago with the attempt to move the Posix CPU
timer heavy lifting out of the timer interrupt code and just have lockless
quick checks in that code path. Trivial 5 patches.
This unearthed an inconsistency in the KVM handling of task work and the
review requested to move all of this into generic code so other
architectures can share.
Valid request and solved with another 25 patches but those unearthed
inconsistencies vs. RCU and instrumentation.
Digging into this made it obvious that there are quite some inconsistencies
vs. instrumentation in general. The int3 text poke handling in particular
was completely unprotected and with the batched update of trace events even
more likely to expose to endless int3 recursion.
In parallel the RCU implications of instrumenting fragile entry code came
up in several discussions.
The conclusion of the X86 maintainer team was to go all the way and make
the protection against any form of instrumentation of fragile and dangerous
code pathes enforcable and verifiable by tooling.
A first batch of preparatory work hit mainline with commit d5f744f9a2.
The (almost) full solution introduced a new code section '.noinstr.text'
into which all code which needs to be protected from instrumentation of all
sorts goes into. Any call into instrumentable code out of this section has
to be annotated. objtool has support to validate this. Kprobes now excludes
this section fully which also prevents BPF from fiddling with it and all
'noinstr' annotated functions also keep ftrace off. The section, kprobes
and objtool changes are already merged.
The major changes coming with this are:
- Preparatory cleanups
- Annotating of relevant functions to move them into the noinstr.text
section or enforcing inlining by marking them __always_inline so the
compiler cannot misplace or instrument them.
- Splitting and simplifying the idtentry macro maze so that it is now
clearly separated into simple exception entries and the more
interesting ones which use interrupt stacks and have the paranoid
handling vs. CR3 and GS.
- Move quite some of the low level ASM functionality into C code:
- enter_from and exit to user space handling. The ASM code now calls
into C after doing the really necessary ASM handling and the return
path goes back out without bells and whistels in ASM.
- exception entry/exit got the equivivalent treatment
- move all IRQ tracepoints from ASM to C so they can be placed as
appropriate which is especially important for the int3 recursion
issue.
- Consolidate the declaration and definition of entry points between 32
and 64 bit. They share a common header and macros now.
- Remove the extra device interrupt entry maze and just use the regular
exception entry code.
- All ASM entry points except NMI are now generated from the shared header
file and the corresponding macros in the 32 and 64 bit entry ASM.
- The C code entry points are consolidated as well with the help of
DEFINE_IDTENTRY*() macros. This allows to ensure at one central point
that all corresponding entry points share the same semantics. The
actual function body for most entry points is in an instrumentable
and sane state.
There are special macros for the more sensitive entry points,
e.g. INT3 and of course the nasty paranoid #NMI, #MCE, #DB and #DF.
They allow to put the whole entry instrumentation and RCU handling
into safe places instead of the previous pray that it is correct
approach.
- The INT3 text poke handling is now completely isolated and the
recursion issue banned. Aside of the entry rework this required other
isolation work, e.g. the ability to force inline bsearch.
- Prevent #DB on fragile entry code, entry relevant memory and disable
it on NMI, #MC entry, which allowed to get rid of the nested #DB IST
stack shifting hackery.
- A few other cleanups and enhancements which have been made possible
through this and already merged changes, e.g. consolidating and
further restricting the IDT code so the IDT table becomes RO after
init which removes yet another popular attack vector
- About 680 lines of ASM maze are gone.
There are a few open issues:
- An escape out of the noinstr section in the MCE handler which needs
some more thought but under the aspect that MCE is a complete
trainwreck by design and the propability to survive it is low, this was
not high on the priority list.
- Paravirtualization
When PV is enabled then objtool complains about a bunch of indirect
calls out of the noinstr section. There are a few straight forward
ways to fix this, but the other issues vs. general correctness were
more pressing than parawitz.
- KVM
KVM is inconsistent as well. Patches have been posted, but they have
not yet been commented on or picked up by the KVM folks.
- IDLE
Pretty much the same problems can be found in the low level idle code
especially the parts where RCU stopped watching. This was beyond the
scope of the more obvious and exposable problems and is on the todo
list.
The lesson learned from this brain melting exercise to morph the evolved
code base into something which can be validated and understood is that once
again the violation of the most important engineering principle
"correctness first" has caused quite a few people to spend valuable time on
problems which could have been avoided in the first place. The "features
first" tinkering mindset really has to stop.
With that I want to say thanks to everyone involved in contributing to this
effort. Special thanks go to the following people (alphabetical order):
Alexandre Chartre
Andy Lutomirski
Borislav Petkov
Brian Gerst
Frederic Weisbecker
Josh Poimboeuf
Juergen Gross
Lai Jiangshan
Macro Elver
Paolo Bonzini
Paul McKenney
Peter Zijlstra
Vitaly Kuznetsov
Will Deacon
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Merge tag 'x86-entry-2020-06-12' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip
Pull x86 entry updates from Thomas Gleixner:
"The x86 entry, exception and interrupt code rework
This all started about 6 month ago with the attempt to move the Posix
CPU timer heavy lifting out of the timer interrupt code and just have
lockless quick checks in that code path. Trivial 5 patches.
This unearthed an inconsistency in the KVM handling of task work and
the review requested to move all of this into generic code so other
architectures can share.
Valid request and solved with another 25 patches but those unearthed
inconsistencies vs. RCU and instrumentation.
Digging into this made it obvious that there are quite some
inconsistencies vs. instrumentation in general. The int3 text poke
handling in particular was completely unprotected and with the batched
update of trace events even more likely to expose to endless int3
recursion.
In parallel the RCU implications of instrumenting fragile entry code
came up in several discussions.
The conclusion of the x86 maintainer team was to go all the way and
make the protection against any form of instrumentation of fragile and
dangerous code pathes enforcable and verifiable by tooling.
A first batch of preparatory work hit mainline with commit
d5f744f9a2 ("Pull x86 entry code updates from Thomas Gleixner")
That (almost) full solution introduced a new code section
'.noinstr.text' into which all code which needs to be protected from
instrumentation of all sorts goes into. Any call into instrumentable
code out of this section has to be annotated. objtool has support to
validate this.
Kprobes now excludes this section fully which also prevents BPF from
fiddling with it and all 'noinstr' annotated functions also keep
ftrace off. The section, kprobes and objtool changes are already
merged.
The major changes coming with this are:
- Preparatory cleanups
- Annotating of relevant functions to move them into the
noinstr.text section or enforcing inlining by marking them
__always_inline so the compiler cannot misplace or instrument
them.
- Splitting and simplifying the idtentry macro maze so that it is
now clearly separated into simple exception entries and the more
interesting ones which use interrupt stacks and have the paranoid
handling vs. CR3 and GS.
- Move quite some of the low level ASM functionality into C code:
- enter_from and exit to user space handling. The ASM code now
calls into C after doing the really necessary ASM handling and
the return path goes back out without bells and whistels in
ASM.
- exception entry/exit got the equivivalent treatment
- move all IRQ tracepoints from ASM to C so they can be placed as
appropriate which is especially important for the int3
recursion issue.
- Consolidate the declaration and definition of entry points between
32 and 64 bit. They share a common header and macros now.
- Remove the extra device interrupt entry maze and just use the
regular exception entry code.
- All ASM entry points except NMI are now generated from the shared
header file and the corresponding macros in the 32 and 64 bit
entry ASM.
- The C code entry points are consolidated as well with the help of
DEFINE_IDTENTRY*() macros. This allows to ensure at one central
point that all corresponding entry points share the same
semantics. The actual function body for most entry points is in an
instrumentable and sane state.
There are special macros for the more sensitive entry points, e.g.
INT3 and of course the nasty paranoid #NMI, #MCE, #DB and #DF.
They allow to put the whole entry instrumentation and RCU handling
into safe places instead of the previous pray that it is correct
approach.
- The INT3 text poke handling is now completely isolated and the
recursion issue banned. Aside of the entry rework this required
other isolation work, e.g. the ability to force inline bsearch.
- Prevent #DB on fragile entry code, entry relevant memory and
disable it on NMI, #MC entry, which allowed to get rid of the
nested #DB IST stack shifting hackery.
- A few other cleanups and enhancements which have been made
possible through this and already merged changes, e.g.
consolidating and further restricting the IDT code so the IDT
table becomes RO after init which removes yet another popular
attack vector
- About 680 lines of ASM maze are gone.
There are a few open issues:
- An escape out of the noinstr section in the MCE handler which needs
some more thought but under the aspect that MCE is a complete
trainwreck by design and the propability to survive it is low, this
was not high on the priority list.
- Paravirtualization
When PV is enabled then objtool complains about a bunch of indirect
calls out of the noinstr section. There are a few straight forward
ways to fix this, but the other issues vs. general correctness were
more pressing than parawitz.
- KVM
KVM is inconsistent as well. Patches have been posted, but they
have not yet been commented on or picked up by the KVM folks.
- IDLE
Pretty much the same problems can be found in the low level idle
code especially the parts where RCU stopped watching. This was
beyond the scope of the more obvious and exposable problems and is
on the todo list.
The lesson learned from this brain melting exercise to morph the
evolved code base into something which can be validated and understood
is that once again the violation of the most important engineering
principle "correctness first" has caused quite a few people to spend
valuable time on problems which could have been avoided in the first
place. The "features first" tinkering mindset really has to stop.
With that I want to say thanks to everyone involved in contributing to
this effort. Special thanks go to the following people (alphabetical
order): Alexandre Chartre, Andy Lutomirski, Borislav Petkov, Brian
Gerst, Frederic Weisbecker, Josh Poimboeuf, Juergen Gross, Lai
Jiangshan, Macro Elver, Paolo Bonzin,i Paul McKenney, Peter Zijlstra,
Vitaly Kuznetsov, and Will Deacon"
* tag 'x86-entry-2020-06-12' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: (142 commits)
x86/entry: Force rcu_irq_enter() when in idle task
x86/entry: Make NMI use IDTENTRY_RAW
x86/entry: Treat BUG/WARN as NMI-like entries
x86/entry: Unbreak __irqentry_text_start/end magic
x86/entry: __always_inline CR2 for noinstr
lockdep: __always_inline more for noinstr
x86/entry: Re-order #DB handler to avoid *SAN instrumentation
x86/entry: __always_inline arch_atomic_* for noinstr
x86/entry: __always_inline irqflags for noinstr
x86/entry: __always_inline debugreg for noinstr
x86/idt: Consolidate idt functionality
x86/idt: Cleanup trap_init()
x86/idt: Use proper constants for table size
x86/idt: Add comments about early #PF handling
x86/idt: Mark init only functions __init
x86/entry: Rename trace_hardirqs_off_prepare()
x86/entry: Clarify irq_{enter,exit}_rcu()
x86/entry: Remove DBn stacks
x86/entry: Remove debug IDT frobbing
x86/entry: Optimize local_db_save() for virt
...
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.
076f14be7f