Re: [PATCH v3 4/4] slub: Force on no_hash_pointers when slub_debug is enabled

[Vlastimil Babka]

On 6/1/21 8:22 PM, Stephen Boyd wrote:
> Obscuring the pointers that slub shows when debugging makes for some
> confusing slub debug messages:
> 
>  Padding overwritten. 0x0000000079f0674a-0x000000000d4dce17
> 
> Those addresses are hashed for kernel security reasons. If we're trying
> to be secure with slub_debug on the commandline we have some big
> problems given that we dump whole chunks of kernel memory to the kernel
> logs. Let's force on the no_hash_pointers commandline flag when
> slub_debug is on the commandline. This makes slub debug messages more
> meaningful and if by chance a kernel address is in some slub debug
> object dump we will have a better chance of figuring out what went
> wrong.
> 
> Note that we don't use %px in the slub code because we want to reduce
> the number of places that %px is used in the kernel. This also nicely
> prints a big fat warning at kernel boot if slub_debug is on the
> commandline so that we know that this kernel shouldn't be used on
> production systems.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Stephen Boyd <swboyd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

Acked-by: Vlastimil Babka <vbabka@xxxxxxx>

> ---
>  include/linux/kernel.h | 2 ++
>  lib/vsprintf.c         | 2 +-
>  mm/slub.c              | 4 ++++
>  3 files changed, 7 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
> 
> diff --git a/include/linux/kernel.h b/include/linux/kernel.h
> index 15d8bad3d2f2..bf950621febf 100644
> --- a/include/linux/kernel.h
> +++ b/include/linux/kernel.h
> @@ -357,6 +357,8 @@ int sscanf(const char *, const char *, ...);
>  extern __scanf(2, 0)
>  int vsscanf(const char *, const char *, va_list);
>  
> +extern int no_hash_pointers_enable(char *str);
> +
>  extern int get_option(char **str, int *pint);
>  extern char *get_options(const char *str, int nints, int *ints);
>  extern unsigned long long memparse(const char *ptr, char **retptr);
> diff --git a/lib/vsprintf.c b/lib/vsprintf.c
> index f0c35d9b65bf..cc281f5895f9 100644
> --- a/lib/vsprintf.c
> +++ b/lib/vsprintf.c
> @@ -2186,7 +2186,7 @@ char *fwnode_string(char *buf, char *end, struct fwnode_handle *fwnode,
>  bool no_hash_pointers __ro_after_init;
>  EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(no_hash_pointers);
>  
> -static int __init no_hash_pointers_enable(char *str)
> +int __init no_hash_pointers_enable(char *str)
>  {
>  	if (no_hash_pointers)
>  		return 0;
> diff --git a/mm/slub.c b/mm/slub.c
> index bf4949115412..a722794f1dbd 100644
> --- a/mm/slub.c
> +++ b/mm/slub.c
> @@ -4460,6 +4460,10 @@ void __init kmem_cache_init(void)
>  	if (debug_guardpage_minorder())
>  		slub_max_order = 0;
>  
> +	/* Print slub debugging pointers without hashing */
> +	if (static_branch_unlikely(&slub_debug_enabled))
> +		no_hash_pointers_enable(NULL);
> +
>  	kmem_cache_node = &boot_kmem_cache_node;
>  	kmem_cache = &boot_kmem_cache;
>  
>