Re: [PATCH 3/3] x86_32: Document our abuse of ss1 and sp1

[Denys Vlasenko]

On 03/10/2015 07:06 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> This has confused me for a while.  Now that I figured it out,
> document it.

Great!

> Signed-off-by: Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  arch/x86/include/asm/processor.h | 21 ++++++++++++++++++---
>  1 file changed, 18 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/processor.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/processor.h
> index fc6d8d0d8d53..b26208998b7c 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/include/asm/processor.h
> +++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/processor.h
> @@ -209,9 +209,24 @@ struct x86_hw_tss {
>  	unsigned short		back_link, __blh;
>  	unsigned long		sp0;
>  	unsigned short		ss0, __ss0h;
> -	unsigned long		sp1;
> -	/* ss1 caches MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_CS: */
> -	unsigned short		ss1, __ss1h;
> +
> +	/*
> +	 * We don't use ring 1, so sp1 and ss1 are convenient scratch
> +	 * spaces in the same cacheline as sp0.  We use them to cache
> +	 * some MSR values to avoid unnecessary wrmsr instructions.

I don't see where exactly tss.ss1/sp1 is getting used as cache.
Grepping for "sp1" string, I found only this:

$ grep -r '[.>]e*sp1' .
./kernel/cpu/common.c:	tss->x86_tss.sp1 = sizeof(struct tss_struct) + (unsigned long) tss;
./kernel/cpu/common.c:	wrmsr(MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_ESP, tss->x86_tss.sp1, 0);

void enable_sep_cpu(void)
{
        int cpu = get_cpu();
        struct tss_struct *tss = &per_cpu(init_tss, cpu);
...
        tss->x86_tss.ss1 = __KERNEL_CS;
        tss->x86_tss.sp1 = sizeof(struct tss_struct) + (unsigned long) tss;
        wrmsr(MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_CS, __KERNEL_CS, 0);
        wrmsr(MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_ESP, tss->x86_tss.sp1, 0);
        wrmsr(MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_EIP, (unsigned long) ia32_sysenter_target, 0);
        put_cpu();
}

It's trivial to rewrite this wrmsr(MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_ESP)
without the detour through x86_tss.sp1.

Apart from this, x86_tss.sp1 appears unused...   ????confused????



.ss1 also seems to be a write-only field:

$ grep -r '[.>]ss1' .
./include/asm/processor.h:	if (unlikely(tss->x86_tss.ss1 != thread->sysenter_cs)) {
./include/asm/processor.h:		tss->x86_tss.ss1 = thread->sysenter_cs;
./include/asm/processor.h:		.ss1		= __KERNEL_CS,				  \
./kernel/cpu/common.c:	tss->x86_tss.ss1 = __KERNEL_CS;



> +	 *
> +	 * We use SYSENTER_ESP to find sp0 and for the NMI emergency
> +	 * stack,

We use what? SYSENTER_ESP is a MSR, right? We don't use it (the MSR)
to find anything... I don't understand what you are saying here.


 but we need to context switch it because we do
> +	 * horrible things to the kernel stack in vm86 mode.
> +	 *
> +	 * We use SYSENTER_CS to disable sysenter in vm86 mode to avoid
> +	 * corrupting the stack if we went through the sysenter path
> +	 * from vm86 mode.
> +	 */

I'm confused how loading ss1/sp1 with anything can disable sysenter.
SYSENTER insn does not use those fields.

What you _can_ disable is you can make it impossible to enter RING1
if tss.ss1 is invalid.


> +	unsigned long		sp1;	/* MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_ESP */
> +	unsigned short		ss1;	/* MSR_IA32_SYSENTER_CS */

The comments in the right don't explain anything (to me, at least).

Sorry for sounding negative.
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