Re: [patch 4/4] entry, treewide: Make syscall_enter_from_user_mode[_work]() indicate syscall execution

[Michal Suchánek]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 09:29:13AM +0200, Michal Suchánek wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 12:20:49AM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 13 2026 at 10:44, Michal Suchánek wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jul 12, 2026 at 11:25:32PM +0200, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > >> The return values of syscall_enter_from_user_mode[_work]() are
> > >> non-intuitive. Both functions return the syscall number which should be
> > >> invoked by the architecture specific syscall entry code. The returned
> > >> number can be:
> > >> 
> > >>   - the unmodified syscall number which was handed in by the caller
> > >> 
> > >>   - a modified syscall number (ptrace, seccomp, trace/probe/bpf)
> > >> 
> > >> That has an additional twist. If the return value is -1L then the caller is
> > >> not allowed to modify the return value as that indicates that the modifying
> > >> entity requests to abort the syscall and set the return value already. That
> > >> can obviously not be differentiated from a syscall which handed in -1 as
> > >> syscall number.
> > >> 
> > >> The most trivial way to deal with that is:
> > >> 
> > >>     set_return_value(regs, -ENOSYS);
> > >>     nr = syscall_enter_from_user_mode(regs, nr);
> > >>     if (valid(nr))
> > >>     	handle_syscall(regs, nr);
> > >> 
> > >> That's what LOONGARCH, RISCV, and X86 do. But PowerPC and S390 do not
> > >> preset the return value, so when user space hands in -1 and there is
> > >> nothing setting the return value in the entry work code, then the syscall
> > >> is skipped but the return value is whatever random data has been in the
> > >> return value register.
> > >
> > > The reason why PowerPC and S390 do not preset the return value is that
> > > the return value uses the same register as the syscall number. There are
> > > apparently other architectures on which the return value overlaps with
> > > the arguments which also do not preset the return value for that reason.
> > > If they would use the generic entry the same problem would arise.
> > 
> > That's an implementation choice of PPC/S390 as I explained before, which
> > could trivially be solved by having an explicit pt_regs->return_val
> > member,

Sorry, I got confused, and was looking at the previous revision of the
patchset.

In this revision I do not see any obvious problem that did not exist
before.

Thanks

Michal