Re: [PATCH 2/2] x86: fix setup of brk area

[Jan Beulich]

On 23.06.2022 10:14, Juergen Gross wrote:
> On 23.06.22 10:09, Jan Beulich wrote:
>> On 22.06.2022 18:10, Juergen Gross wrote:
>>> Commit e32683c6f7d2 ("x86/mm: Fix RESERVE_BRK() for older binutils")
>>> put the brk area into the .bss segment, causing it not to be cleared
>>> initially.
>>
>> This reads contradictively: If the area was put in .bss, it would be
>> cleared. Thing is it is put in .bss..brk in the object files, while
>> the linker script puts it in .brk (i.e. outside of .bss).
> 
> Hmm, yes, this should be reworded.
> 
>>
>>> As the brk area is used to allocate early page tables, these
>>> might contain garbage in not explicitly written entries.
>>
>> I'm surprised this lack of zero-initialization didn't cause any issue
>> outside of PV Xen. Unless of course there never was the intention for
>> users of the facility to assume blank pages coming from there, in
>> which case Xen's use for early page tables would have been wrong (in
>> not explicitly zeroing the space first).
> 
> Fun fact: Its not Xen's use for early page tables, but the kernel's
> init code. It is used for bare metal, too.
> 
> The use case for initial page tables is the problematic one. Only the
> needed page table entries are written by the kernel, so the other ones
> keep their initial garbage values. As normally no uninitialized entries
> are ever referenced, this will have no real impact.

Are you sure there couldn't surface user-mode accessible page table
entries pointing at random pages?

Jan