Re: [PATCH] static_call,x86: Robustify trampoline patching

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Wed Nov 03 2021 - 15:32:25 EST


On 11/3/21 01:35, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
On Tue, Nov 02, 2021 at 05:20:05PM -0700, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
I think that's a big mistake -- any sane ENDBR-using scheme would
really prefer that ENDBR to be right next to the actual function body,
and really any scheme would benefit due to better cache locality.

Agreed, IBT/BTI want the landing pad in front of the actual function.

But, more importantly, IMO any sane ENDBR-using scheme wants to
generate the indirect stub as part of code gen for the actual
function.

Sorta, I really want to be able to not have a landing pad for functions
whose address is never taken. At that point it doesn't matter if it gets
generated along with the function and then stripped/poisoned later, or
generated later.

Stripping is conceptually straightforward even without LTO.

foo.indirect:
ENDBR
foo:
...

and the linker learns (using magic function sections?) that, if foo.indirect is not referenced, then it should not be generated. Or a very straightforward walk over all the relocations in an object to poison the unused .indirect entries could be done. Making this work with DSOs, EXPORT_SYMBOL, etc will be somewhat nontrivial, but not impossible.

--Andy