Re: Is espfix64's double-fault thing OK on Xen?

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Mon Jul 14 2014 - 13:16:27 EST


On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 10:11 AM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 10:04 AM, H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> On 07/09/2014 04:17 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
>>> This part in __do_double_fault looks fishy:
>>>
>>> cmpl $__KERNEL_CS,CS(%rdi)
>>> jne do_double_fault
>>>
>>> Shouldn't that be:
>>>
>>> test $3,CS(%rdi)
>>> jnz do_double_fault
>>>
>>
>> No, it should be fine. The *only* case where we need to do the espfix
>> magic is when we are on __KERNEL_CS.
>>
>
> IIRC Xen has a somewhat different GDT, and at least the userspace CS
> in IA32_STAR disagrees with normal Linux. If the kernel CS is also
> strange, then there will be an extra possible CS value here.

There's FLAT_KERNEL_CS64, which is not equal to __KERNEL_CS. If the
espfix mechanism gets invoked with that CS, then I expect that
something unexpected will happen.

That being said, FLAT_KERNEL_CS64 is CPL3, so my code might not be any better.

--Andy
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