[PATCH v2] Documentation: x86: Fix obsolete name of page fault handler

From: Chin En Lin
Date: Fri Mar 18 2022 - 10:26:41 EST


Since commit 91eeafea1e4b ("x86/entry: Switch page fault exception to
IDTENTRY_RAW"), the function name of the page fault handler is out of date.
And because of commit aa37c51b9421 ("x86/mm: Break out user address space
handling"), the description of search_exception_table is not correct
anymore. It may mislead the user who wants to use the documentation to
figure out the page fault handler.

Also, fix typo and add the parentheses after function and macro name.

Signed-off-by: Chin En Lin <shiyn.lin@xxxxxxxxx>
---
Documentation/x86/exception-tables.rst | 23 +++++++++++++----------
1 file changed, 13 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)

diff --git a/Documentation/x86/exception-tables.rst b/Documentation/x86/exception-tables.rst
index de58110c5ffd..efde1fef4fbd 100644
--- a/Documentation/x86/exception-tables.rst
+++ b/Documentation/x86/exception-tables.rst
@@ -32,14 +32,14 @@ Whenever the kernel tries to access an address that is currently not
accessible, the CPU generates a page fault exception and calls the
page fault handler::

- void do_page_fault(struct pt_regs *regs, unsigned long error_code)
+ void exc_page_fault(struct pt_regs *regs, unsigned long error_code)

in arch/x86/mm/fault.c. The parameters on the stack are set up by
the low level assembly glue in arch/x86/entry/entry_32.S. The parameter
regs is a pointer to the saved registers on the stack, error_code
contains a reason code for the exception.

-do_page_fault first obtains the unaccessible address from the CPU
+exc_page_fault() first obtains the inaccessible address from the CPU
control register CR2. If the address is within the virtual address
space of the process, the fault probably occurred, because the page
was not swapped in, write protected or something similar. However,
@@ -57,10 +57,10 @@ Where does fixup point to?

Since we jump to the contents of fixup, fixup obviously points
to executable code. This code is hidden inside the user access macros.
-I have picked the get_user macro defined in arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess.h
+I have picked the get_user() macro defined in arch/x86/include/asm/uaccess.h
as an example. The definition is somewhat hard to follow, so let's peek at
the code generated by the preprocessor and the compiler. I selected
-the get_user call in drivers/char/sysrq.c for a detailed examination.
+the get_user() call in drivers/char/sysrq.c for a detailed examination.

The original code in sysrq.c line 587::

@@ -281,12 +281,15 @@ vma occurs?

> c017e7a5 <do_con_write+e1> movb (%ebx),%dl
#. MMU generates exception
-#. CPU calls do_page_fault
-#. do page fault calls search_exception_table (regs->eip == c017e7a5);
-#. search_exception_table looks up the address c017e7a5 in the
+#. CPU calls exc_page_fault()
+#. exc_page_fault() calls do_user_addr_fault()
+#. do_user_addr_fault() calls kernelmode_fixup_or_oops()
+#. kernelmode_fixup_or_oops() calls fixup_exception() (regs->eip == c017e7a5);
+#. fixup_exception() calls search_exception_tables()
+#. search_exception_tables() looks up the address c017e7a5 in the
exception table (i.e. the contents of the ELF section __ex_table)
and returns the address of the associated fault handle code c0199ff5.
-#. do_page_fault modifies its own return address to point to the fault
+#. fixup_exception() modifies its own return address to point to the fault
handle code and returns.
#. execution continues in the fault handling code.
#. a) EAX becomes -EFAULT (== -14)
@@ -298,9 +301,9 @@ The steps 8a to 8c in a certain way emulate the faulting instruction.

That's it, mostly. If you look at our example, you might ask why
we set EAX to -EFAULT in the exception handler code. Well, the
-get_user macro actually returns a value: 0, if the user access was
+get_user() macro actually returns a value: 0, if the user access was
successful, -EFAULT on failure. Our original code did not test this
-return value, however the inline assembly code in get_user tries to
+return value, however the inline assembly code in get_user() tries to
return -EFAULT. GCC selected EAX to return this value.

NOTE:
--
2.25.1