Re: [PATCH v3 00/12] Enable Linear Address Space Separation support

[Edgecombe, Rick P]

On Mon, 2023-07-31 at 15:36 -0700, Rick Edgecombe wrote:
> On Fri, 2023-06-09 at 21:36 +0300, Alexander Shishkin wrote:
> 
> 
> What do NULL pointer de-references look like with LASS enabled? They
> will be a #GP instead of a #PF, right? Currently the kernel prints
> out
> several types of helpful messages:
>  - "BUG: kernel NULL pointer dereference, address: %lx"
>  - "BUG: unable to handle page fault for address: %px
>  - "unable to execute userspace code (SMEP?) (uid: %d)"
>  - etc
> 
> These will go away I guess, and you will get a more opaque "general
> protection fault" message?
> 
> Assuming that is all right, I don't know if it might be worth
> tweaking
> that #GP message, so people aren't confused when debugging. Something
> that explains to turn off LASS to get more debugging info.

Maybe get_kernel_gp_address() could be enhanced to give hints for some
of those cases like it does for non-canonical addresses?


Separately, I think there is a tiny userspace visible change with this.
If userspace tries to access the kernel half of the cannonical address
space they will get a segfault. It seems previously the signal would
have REG_TRAPNO as 14 (X86_TRAP_PF) in this case, but with LASS it will
be 13 (X86_TRAP_GP).

I did a quick search and couldn't find any applications that seemed to
be relying on this behavior (not surprising). Some are looking for
REG_TRAPNO as 14, but none appeared to be relying on accesses to kernel
memory so I guess this should be ok. Still, it is probably appropriate
to call out the change and CC linux-api.

It makes me wonder if it should match for LASS and not LASS going
forward though. Like maybe always do X86_TRAP_GP for user->kernel
accesses instead of having it vary by whether LASS is used? Since there
isn't enough information to do REG_TRAPNO X86_TRAP_PF when LASS is
used.