Re: [PATCH v4] x86, efi: never relocate kernel below lowest acceptable address

[Ard Biesheuvel]

On Tue, 22 Oct 2019 at 09:45, Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Oct 22, 2019 at 08:13:56AM +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > On Thu, 17 Oct 2019 at 11:30, Kairui Song <kasong@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > Currently, kernel fails to boot on some HyperV VMs when using EFI.
> > > And it's a potential issue on all platforms.
> > >
> > > It's caused by broken kernel relocation on EFI systems, when below three
> > > conditions are met:
> > >
> > > 1. Kernel image is not loaded to the default address (LOAD_PHYSICAL_ADDR)
> > >    by the loader.
> > > 2. There isn't enough room to contain the kernel, starting from the
> > >    default load address (eg. something else occupied part the region).
> > > 3. In the memmap provided by EFI firmware, there is a memory region
> > >    starts below LOAD_PHYSICAL_ADDR, and suitable for containing the
> > >    kernel.
> > >
> > > EFI stub will perform a kernel relocation when condition 1 is met. But
> > > due to condition 2, EFI stub can't relocate kernel to the preferred
> > > address, so it fallback to ask EFI firmware to alloc lowest usable memory
> > > region, got the low region mentioned in condition 3, and relocated
> > > kernel there.
> > >
> > > It's incorrect to relocate the kernel below LOAD_PHYSICAL_ADDR. This
> > > is the lowest acceptable kernel relocation address.
> > >
> > > The first thing goes wrong is in arch/x86/boot/compressed/head_64.S.
> > > Kernel decompression will force use LOAD_PHYSICAL_ADDR as the output
> > > address if kernel is located below it. Then the relocation before
> > > decompression, which move kernel to the end of the decompression buffer,
> > > will overwrite other memory region, as there is no enough memory there.
> > >
> > > To fix it, just don't let EFI stub relocate the kernel to any address
> > > lower than lowest acceptable address.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Kairui Song <kasong@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > Acked-by: Jarkko Sakkinen <jarkko.sakkinen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > >
> >
> > Ingo, Boris, could you please comment on this?
>
> Yah, the commit message makes more sense now.
>


Thanks Boris.

Kairui, I will apply the requested changes myself - no need to spin a v5