Messages in this thread | | | Subject | i386 PDA patches use of %gs | From | Arjan van de Ven <> | Date | Tue, 12 Sep 2006 09:35:40 +0200 |
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Hi,
Userspace uses %gs for it's per thread data (and in modern linux versions that means "all the time", errno is there for example).
On x86-64 this is the reason that the kernel uses the OTHER segment register; so for the PDA patches this would mean using %fs and not %gs.
The advantage of this is very simple: %fs will be 0 for userspace most of the time. Putting 0 in a segment register is cheap for the cpu, putting anything else in is quite expensive (a LOT of security checks need to happen). As such I would MUCH rather see that the i386 PDA patches use %fs and not %gs...
Jeremy, is there a reason you're specifically using %gs and not %fs? If not, would you mind a switch to using %fs instead?
Greetings, Arjan van de Ven -- if you want to mail me at work (you don't), use arjan (at) linux.intel.com
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