Re: [GIT pull] x86 vdso updates

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Sat May 28 2011 - 11:35:55 EST



* Andrew Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 7:36 AM, Andrew Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> > 3. Add int 0xcc and use it from vgettimeofday.  It will SIGSEGV if
> > called from a user address (so it has no risk of ever becoming ABI)
> > and it will do gettimeofday if called from the right address.  (I like
> > 0xcc better than 0x81 because then I don't have to wonder whether any
> > syscall-like instructions start with 0x81.)  I'm not convinced that
> > the existing syscall entries are usable, because syscall itself has a
> > different calling convention and int 0x80 is a compat syscall.
> >
>
> I started looking at what needs to be done and I wanted to get your
> opinion before I wrote a bunch of code that you'd reject. Here are
> three ideas for how the int 0xcc / int 0x81 entry could work:
>
> *** Idea 1 ***
>
> Make it a real syscall but with extra constraints. It would have the
> same calling convention as the syscall instruction, but it would turn
> into SIGKILL if the calling address isn't in the VSYSCALL page or if
> the syscall number isn't __NR_clock_gettimeofday. It would BUG() if
> called from kernel mode. There are two ways to implement this:
>
> 1. Have the interrupt entry check constraints, twiddle its stack frame
> to look like a syscall instruction, and jump to the syscall entry.
> This way there's little code duplication. (Is it safe to sysret back
> to userspace from an interrupt gate? I don't see why not, but it
> seems to violate the spirit of the thing.)

Yeah, i think it should be safe. Lets try this? It looks like the
simplest variant.

Thanks,

Ingo
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