Re: [patch V4 part 2 10/18] x86/entry/64: Check IF in __preempt_enable_notrace() thunk

[Andy Lutomirski]

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 7:14 AM Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> The preempt_enable_notrace() ASM thunk is called from tracing, entry code
> RCU and other places which are already in or going to be in the noinstr
> section which protects sensitve code from being instrumented.

This text and $SUBJECT agree that you're talking about
preempt_enable_notrace(), but:

> +       THUNK preempt_schedule_notrace_thunk, preempt_schedule_notrace, check_if=1

You actually seem to be changing preempt_schedule_notrace().

The actual code in question has this comment:

/**
 * preempt_schedule_notrace - preempt_schedule called by tracing
 *
 * The tracing infrastructure uses preempt_enable_notrace to prevent
 * recursion and tracing preempt enabling caused by the tracing
 * infrastructure itself. But as tracing can happen in areas coming
 * from userspace or just about to enter userspace, a preempt enable
 * can occur before user_exit() is called. This will cause the scheduler
 * to be called when the system is still in usermode.
 *
 * To prevent this, the preempt_enable_notrace will use this function
 * instead of preempt_schedule() to exit user context if needed before
 * calling the scheduler.
 */

Which is no longer really applicable to x86 -- in the state that this
comment nonsensically refers to as "userspace", x86 *always* has IRQs
off, which means that preempt_enable() will not schedule.

So I'm guessing that the issue you're solving is that we have
redundant preempt disable/enable pairs somewhere in the bowels of
tracing code that is called with IRQs off, and objtool is now
complaining.  Could the actual code in question be fixed to assert
that IRQs are off instead of disabling preemption?  If not, can you
fix the $SUBJECT and changelog and perhaps add a comment to the code
as to *why* you're checking IF?  Otherwise some intrepid programmer is
going to notice it down the road, wonder if it's optimizing anything
useful at all, and get rid of it.