[RFC/INCOMPLETE 00/13] x86: Rewrite exit-to-userspace code

[Andy Lutomirski]

This is incomplete, but it's finally good enough that I think it's
time to get other opinions on it.  It is a complete rewrite of the
slow path code that handles exits to user mode.

The exit-to-usermode code is copied in several places and is written
in a nasty combination of asm and C.  It's not at all clear what
it's supposed to do, and the way it's structured makes it very hard
to work with.  For example, it's not even clear why syscall exit
hooks are called only once per syscall right now.  (It seems to be a
side effect of the way that rdi and rdx are handled in the asm loop,
and it seems reliable, but it's still pointlessly complicated.)  The
existing code also makes context tracking overly complicated and
hard to understand.  Finally, it's nearly impossible for anyone to
change what happens on exit to usermode, since the existing code is
so fragile.

I tried to clean it up incrementally, but I decided it was too hard.
Instead, this series just replaces the code.  It seems to work.

Context tracking in particular works very differently now.  The
low-level entry code checks that we're in CONTEXT_USER and switches
to CONTEXT_KERNEL.  The exit code does the reverse.  There is no
need to track what CONTEXT_XYZ state we came from, because we
already know.  Similarly, SCHEDULE_USER is gone, since we can
reschedule if needed by simply calling schedule() from C code.

The main things that are missing are that I haven't done the 32-bit
parts (anyone want to help?) and therefore I haven't deleted the old
C code.  I also think this may break UML for trivial reasons.

Because I haven't converted the 32-bit code yet, all of the now-unnecessary
unnecessary calls to exception_enter are still present in traps.c.

IRQ context tracking is still duplicated.  We should probably clean
it up by changing the core code to supply something like
irq_enter_we_are_already_in_context_kernel.

Thoughts?

Andy Lutomirski (13):
  context_tracking: Add context_tracking_assert_state
  notifiers: Assert that RCU is watching in notify_die
  x86: Move C entry and exit code to arch/x86/entry/common.c
  x86/traps: Assert that we're in CONTEXT_KERNEL in exception entries
  x86/entry: Add enter_from_user_mode and use it in syscalls
  x86/entry: Add new, comprehensible entry and exit hooks
  x86/entry/64: Really create an error-entry-from-usermode code path
  x86/entry/64: Migrate 64-bit syscalls to new exit hooks
  x86/entry/compat: Migrate compat syscalls to new exit hooks
  x86/asm/entry/64: Save all regs on interrupt entry
  x86/asm/entry/64: Simplify irq stack pt_regs handling
  x86/asm/entry/64: Migrate error and interrupt exit work to C
  x86/entry: Remove SCHEDULE_USER and asm/context-tracking.h

 arch/x86/entry/Makefile                 |   1 +
 arch/x86/entry/common.c                 | 372 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 arch/x86/entry/entry_64.S               | 176 ++++-----------
 arch/x86/entry/entry_64_compat.S        |   7 +-
 arch/x86/include/asm/context_tracking.h |  10 -
 arch/x86/include/asm/signal.h           |   1 +
 arch/x86/kernel/ptrace.c                | 202 +----------------
 arch/x86/kernel/signal.c                |  28 +--
 arch/x86/kernel/traps.c                 |   9 +
 include/linux/context_tracking.h        |   8 +
 kernel/notifier.c                       |   2 +
 11 files changed, 439 insertions(+), 377 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 arch/x86/entry/common.c
 delete mode 100644 arch/x86/include/asm/context_tracking.h

-- 
2.4.3

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/