Re: [patch 0/8] x86/fpu: Mop up XSAVES and related damage

[Dave Hansen]

On 6/4/21 7:05 AM, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> But looking at the above, it's not clear to me why that PKRU stuff works
> at all (upstream), but I'll figure it out eventually. I'm quite sure
> that it does work by pure chance not by design.

The upstream flush_thread() code appears correct and even intentionally
so.  Just how we must eagerly load PKRU on a context switch, the
fpu__clear*() code eagerly "clears" PKRU.  It doesn't actually zero it,
of course, but reverts the register and the fpstate back to the
'init_pkru_value':

flush_thread()->fpu__clear_all()->fpu__clear(user_only=false)
	copy_init_fpstate_to_fpregs()
		copy_kernel_to_xregs(init_fpu) // fpstate
		copy_init_pkru_to_fpregs()
			 write_pkru(init_pkru_value_snapshot) // fpregs

Andy said you have a fix for this, but I think the new fpu__clear_all()
is failing to do the eager write_pkru().