Re: [PATCH v9 00/24] ILP32 for ARM64

[Catalin Marinas]

On Wed, Oct 10, 2018 at 04:10:21PM +0200, Eugene Syromiatnikov wrote:
> I have some questions regarding AArch64 ILP32 implementation for which I
> failed to find an answer myself:
>  * How ptrace() tracer is supposed to distinguish between ILP32 and LP64
>    tracees? For MIPS N32 and x32 this is possible based on syscall
>    number, but for AArch64 ILP32 I do not see such a sign. There's also
>    ARM_ip is employed for signalling entering/exiting, I wonder whether
>    it's possible to employ it also for signalling tracee's personality.

With the current implementation, I don't think you can distinguish. From
the kernel perspective, the register set is the same. What is the
use-case for this?

We could add a new regset to expose the ILP32 state (NT_ARM_..., I can't
think of a name now but probably not PER* as this implies PER_LINUX_...
which is independent from TIF_32BIT_*).

>  * What's the reasoning behind capping syscall arguments to 32 bit? x32
>    and MIPS N32 do not have such a restriction (and do not need special
>    wrappers for syscalls that pass 64-bit values as a result, except
>    when they do,  as it is the case for preadv2 on x32); moreover, that
>    would lead to insurmountable difficulties for AArch64 ILP32 tracers
>    that try to trace LP64 tracees, as it would be impossible to pass
>    64-bit addresses to process_vm_{read,write} or ptrace PEEK/POKE.

We've attempted in earlier versions to allow a mix of 32 and 64-bit
register values from ILP32 but it got pretty complicated. The entry code
would need to know which registers need zeroing of the top 32-bit and
the generic unistd.h wrapper hacks were not very nice. Some past
discussions:

https://www.mail-archive.com/linux-kernel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg1211716.html

-- 
Catalin