[PATCH 1/5] x86: provide new infrastructure for GDT descriptors

From: Vegard Nossum
Date: Tue Dec 19 2023 - 10:13:16 EST


Linus suggested replacing the magic numbers in the GDT descriptors
using preprocessor macros. Designing the interface properly is actually
pretty hard -- there are several constraints:

- you want the final expressions to be readable at a glance; something
like GDT_ENTRY_FLAGS(5, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0) isn't because you need
to visit the definition to understand what each parameter represents
and then match up parameters in the user and the definition (which is
hard when there are so many of them)

- you want the final expressions to be fairly short/information-dense;
something like GDT_ENTRY_PRESENT | GDT_ENTRY_DATA_WRITABLE |
GDT_ENTRY_SYSTEM | GDT_ENTRY_DB | GDT_ENTRY_GRANULARITY_4K is a bit
too verbose to write out every time and is actually hard to read as
well because of all the repetition

- you may want to assume defaults for some things (e.g. entries are
DPL-0 a.k.a. kernel segments by default) and allow the user to
override the default -- but this works best if you can OR in the
override; if you want DPL-3 by default and override with DPL-0 you
would need to start masking off bits instead of OR-ing them in and
that just becomes harder to read

- you may want to parameterize some things (e.g. CODE vs. DATA or
KERNEL vs. USER) since both values are used and you don't really
want prefer either one by default -- or DPL, which is always some
value that is always specified

This patch tries to balance these requirements and has two layers of
definitions -- low-level and high-level:

- the low-level defines are the mapping between human-readable names
and the actual bit numbers

- the high-level defines are the mapping from high-level intent to
combinations of low-level flags, representing roughly a tuple
(data/code/tss, 64/32/16-bits) plus an override for DPL-3 (= USER),
since that's relatively rare but still very important to mark
properly for those segments.

- we have *_BIOS variants for 32-bit code and data segments that don't
have the G flag set and give the limit in terms of bytes instead of
pages

Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=wib5XLebuEra7y2YH96wxdk=8vJnA8XoVq0FExpzVvN=Q@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
Signed-off-by: Vegard Nossum <vegard.nossum@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/x86/include/asm/desc_defs.h | 66 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++----
1 file changed, 58 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/include/asm/desc_defs.h b/arch/x86/include/asm/desc_defs.h
index f7e7099af595..b33f5bb240eb 100644
--- a/arch/x86/include/asm/desc_defs.h
+++ b/arch/x86/include/asm/desc_defs.h
@@ -8,6 +8,56 @@
* archs.
*/

+/*
+ * Low-level interface mapping flags/field names to bits
+ */
+
+/* Flags for _DESC_S (non-system) descriptors */
+#define _DESC_ACCESSED 0x0001
+#define _DESC_DATA_WRITABLE 0x0002
+#define _DESC_CODE_READABLE 0x0002
+#define _DESC_DATA_EXPAND_DOWN 0x0004
+#define _DESC_CODE_CONFORMING 0x0004
+#define _DESC_CODE_EXECUTABLE 0x0008
+
+/* Common flags */
+#define _DESC_S 0x0010
+#define _DESC_DPL(dpl) ((dpl) << 5)
+#define _DESC_PRESENT 0x0080
+
+#define _DESC_LONG_CODE 0x2000
+#define _DESC_DB 0x4000
+#define _DESC_GRANULARITY_4K 0x8000
+
+/* System descriptors have a numeric "type" field instead of flags */
+#define _DESC_SYSTEM(code) (code)
+
+/*
+ * High-level interface mapping intended usage to low-level combinations
+ * of flags
+ */
+
+#define _DESC_DATA (_DESC_S | _DESC_PRESENT | \
+ _DESC_DATA_WRITABLE)
+#define _DESC_CODE (_DESC_S | _DESC_PRESENT | \
+ _DESC_CODE_READABLE | _DESC_CODE_EXECUTABLE)
+
+#define DESC_DATA16 (_DESC_DATA)
+#define DESC_CODE16 (_DESC_CODE)
+
+#define DESC_DATA32 (_DESC_DATA | _DESC_GRANULARITY_4K | _DESC_DB)
+#define DESC_DATA32_BIOS (_DESC_DATA | _DESC_DB)
+
+#define DESC_CODE32 (_DESC_CODE | _DESC_GRANULARITY_4K | _DESC_DB)
+#define DESC_CODE32_BIOS (_DESC_CODE | _DESC_DB)
+
+#define DESC_TSS32 (_DESC_SYSTEM(9) | _DESC_PRESENT)
+
+#define DESC_DATA64 (_DESC_DATA | _DESC_GRANULARITY_4K | _DESC_DB)
+#define DESC_CODE64 (_DESC_CODE | _DESC_GRANULARITY_4K | _DESC_LONG_CODE)
+
+#define DESC_USER (_DESC_DPL(3))
+
#ifndef __ASSEMBLY__

#include <linux/types.h>
@@ -27,14 +77,14 @@ struct desc_struct {
.base0 = (u16) (base), \
.base1 = ((base) >> 16) & 0xFF, \
.base2 = ((base) >> 24) & 0xFF, \
- .type = (flags & 0x0f), \
- .s = (flags >> 4) & 0x01, \
- .dpl = (flags >> 5) & 0x03, \
- .p = (flags >> 7) & 0x01, \
- .avl = (flags >> 12) & 0x01, \
- .l = (flags >> 13) & 0x01, \
- .d = (flags >> 14) & 0x01, \
- .g = (flags >> 15) & 0x01, \
+ .type = ((flags) & 0x0f), \
+ .s = ((flags) >> 4) & 0x01, \
+ .dpl = ((flags) >> 5) & 0x03, \
+ .p = ((flags) >> 7) & 0x01, \
+ .avl = ((flags) >> 12) & 0x01, \
+ .l = ((flags) >> 13) & 0x01, \
+ .d = ((flags) >> 14) & 0x01, \
+ .g = ((flags) >> 15) & 0x01, \
}

enum {
--
2.34.1