Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: [Fastboot] [PATCH 1/3] stack overflow safe kdump (2.6.18-rc1-i386) - safe_smp_processor_id | From | Fernando Luis Vázquez Cao <> | Date | Tue, 11 Jul 2006 15:40:42 +0900 |
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On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 22:04 +1000, Keith Owens wrote: > Fernando Luis =?ISO-8859-1?Q?V=E1zquez?= Cao (on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 19:15:50 +0900) wrote: > >Hi Keith, > > > >Thank you for the comments. > > > >On Mon, 2006-07-10 at 18:27 +1000, Keith Owens wrote: > >> Fernando Luis Vazquez Cao (on Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:50:52 +0900) wrote: > >> >On the event of a stack overflow critical data that usually resides at > >> >the bottom of the stack is likely to be stomped and, consequently, its > >> >use should be avoided. > >> > > >> >In particular, in the i386 and IA64 architectures the macro > >> >smp_processor_id ultimately makes use of the "cpu" member of struct > >> >thread_info which resides at the bottom of the stack. x86_64, on the > >> >other hand, is not affected by this problem because it benefits from > >> >the use of the PDA infrastructure. > >> > > >> >To circumvent this problem I suggest implementing > >> >"safe_smp_processor_id()" (it already exists in x86_64) for i386 and > >> >IA64 and use it as a replacement for smp_processor_id in the reboot path > >> >to the dump capture kernel. This is a possible implementation for i386. > >> = > > > >> I agree with avoiding the use of thread_info when the stack might be > >> corrupt. However your patch results in reading apic data and scanning > >> NR_CPU sized tables for each IPI that is sent, which will slow down the > >> sending of all IPIs, not just dump. > >This patch only affects IPIs sent using send_IPI_allbutself which is > >rarely called, so the impact in performance should be negligible. > > The main users of send_IPI_allbutself() are smp_call_function() and > on_each_cpu(), which are used quite often. My main concern are the > architectures that use IPI to flush TLB entries from other cpus. For > example, i386 ioremap_page_range() -> flush_tlb_all() -> on_each_cpu(). > > >> It would be far cheaper to define > >> a per-cpu variable containing the logical cpu number, set that variable > >> once as each cpu is brought up and just read it in cases where you > >> might not trust the integrity of struct thread_info. safe_smp_processor_= > >id() > >> resolves to just a read of the per cpu variable. > >But to read a per-cpu variable you need to index the corresponding array > >with processor id of the current CPU (see code below), but that is > >precisely what we are trying to figure out. > > Ouch, I am so used to ia64 where accessing the local per cpu variables > is a direct read, with no need to use smp_processor_id(). > > The use of smp_processor_id() in include/asm-generic/percpu.h is > worrying, it means that any RAS code like dump or debuggers cannot > access any per cpu variables. Corrupt the kernel stack and all per cpu > variables become useless! That is a hidden bug, just waiting to bite > all the RAS code. Agreed. Some time ago I considered implementing something similar to x86_64's PDA for i386 using the gs register. However, I discovered that a similar approach had been discussed before and finally discarded, because access to this segment register in i386 architectures was deemed too slow.
Regards,
Fernando
> > ia64, x86_64, power, s390, sparc64 do not suffer from this problem, > they have efficient implementations of __get_cpu_var(). All other > architectures (including i386) use the generic percpu code and per cpu > variables will not work with corrupt kernel stacks.
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