Re: [RFC] x86: xsave/xrstor support, ucontext_t extensions
From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Wed May 21 2008 - 20:33:02 EST
Suresh Siddha wrote:
An ugly workaround could be to start clearing one of these fields,
and say that the data there is only valid for kernels >= 2.6.26.
(I said it was ugly...)
Or we go back to stashing a flag in uc_flags (which is kosher),
and try to figure out how to mark non-rt sigframes.
This issue of not-zeroing, is present in only 64bit kernels and for 64bit apps,
right?
64bit app signal handling uses only rt_frame, so we can add an uc_flag for
them and for 32bit apps, kernel was always zero'ing the reserved bits
at the end of _fpstate.
In short, for non-rt frames, they can check the reserved bits at the end
of fpstate frame and for rt-frames (perhaps even for 32bit rt frame handling)
apps can check for uc_flag aswell, for extended state presence. Is this
good enough?
Okay, trying to close on this :)
I would suggest using the uc_flag for the rt frames, and simply rely on
the OSXSAVE flag for non-rt signal frames. It a rather sucky approach
(as previously discussed), but since any sane user of these fields (as
opposed to just relying on the kernel to save/restore) should use the
SIGINFO frames, I don't see a problem *as long as it's possible to get
the information* -- any solution which demands performance should just
turn on SIGINFO and be happy.
The biggest potential problem with this that I see is that relying on
CPUID can mess with certain virtualization solutions. Another option to
accomplish the same thing would be to have a system call (preferrably a
prctl, since it is at least in theory personality-dependent) to query
what information is included in the fpstate data - since it will always
be the same for any particular kernel.
Thoughts?
-hpa
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