Re: [PATCH v2 1/6] Fix "x86/alternatives: Lockdep-enforce text_mutex in text_poke*()"

[Peter Zijlstra]

On Thu, Sep 06, 2018 at 07:42:14PM +0000, Nadav Amit wrote:
> at 12:40 PM, Peter Zijlstra <peterz@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Sep 02, 2018 at 10:32:19AM -0700, Nadav Amit wrote:
> >> text_mutex is expected to be held before text_poke() is called, but we
> >> cannot add a lockdep assertion since kgdb does not take it, and instead
> >> *supposedly* ensures the lock is not taken and will not be acquired by
> >> any other core while text_poke() is running.
> >> 
> >> The reason for the "supposedly" comment is that it is not entirely clear
> >> that this would be the case if gdb_do_roundup is zero.
> > 
> > Argh, that's pretty shit code...
> > 
> > Not only is that text_mutex abuse ugly, so too is the fixmap usage from
> > IRQ context. I suppose this really does require your alternative mm
> > patches for text_poke().
> 
> Right, I forgot about thatâ

With that CR3 trickery, we can rid ourselves of the text_mutex
requirement, since concurrent text_poke is 'safe'. That would clean up
the kgdb code quite a bit.