RE: [PATCH 14/15] x86/fsgsbase/64: Support legacy behavior when FS/GS updated by ptracer

[Metzger, Markus T]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andy Lutomirski [mailto:luto@xxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: 21 March 2018 01:47

Hello Andy,

> I retract this particular comment.  But I still think that all this complexity needs to
> be more clearly justified.  My objection to the old approach wasn't that I thought
> it was obviously wrong -- I thought that someone needed to survey existing
> ptrace() users and see if anyone needed the fancier code that you're adding.  Did
> you find something that needs this fancy code?

There are 3 cases:
- only FS changed, e.g. "p $fs = ..."
- only FS_BASE changed, e.g. "p $fs_base = ..."
- both change, e.g. "p foo()" when restoring the original register state on return
  from the inferior call

The ptracer may use SETREGS in all 3 cases, even though only a single register changed.

For case 1, it might make sense to change FS_BASE as a side-effect.
For case 2, we'd only want to change FS_BASE and leave FS.
For case 3, we'd want both FS and FS_BASE to be set to the ptracer-provided values.

Does that make sense?

Thanks,
Markus.

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