RE: [PATCHv13 05/16] x86/uaccess: Provide untagged_addr() and remove tags before address check

[David Laight]

From: Linus Torvalds
> Sent: 02 January 2023 19:05
...
> > Are byte loads guaranteed to fault?
> 
> Yeah, we don't map the highest address on x86-64. And we don't want to
> in the future either, because of how our error pointers work (ie if
> somebody misses an "IS_ERR()" check and uses an error pointer as a
> pointer, we want that to fault, rather than do random things).
> 
> It's not a hard requirement architecturally (either hardware or
> software), and iirc on 32-bit we used to use the last virtual page for
> something, so maybe I'm missing some odd use on 64-bit too, but
> accessing the top-of-virtual address space on x86-64 should always
> cause a clear fault afaik.
> 
> A byte access would always be a page fault, while a wrapping access
> might trigger a GP fault first (probably not - on 32-bit it would be a
> segment size violation, on 64-bit we've left those bad old days behind
> and I don't think wrapping matters either)

For some reason I was thinking you were relying on the wrapping access.

The other check is access_ok() for longer copies.
If you make the assumption that the copy is 'reasonably sequential'
then the length can be ignored provided that the bottom of 'kernel
space' is unmapped.
For x86-64 treating -ve values as kernel that is pretty true.
32-bit would need at least one unmapped page between user and kernel.
I suspect the kernel is loaded at 0xc0000000 making that difficult.

	David

-
Registered Address Lakeside, Bramley Road, Mount Farm, Milton Keynes, MK1 1PT, UK
Registration No: 1397386 (Wales)