[PATCHv4 14/17] arm64: uaccess: remove set_fs()

Mark Rutland mark.rutland at arm.com
Tue Nov 17 05:44:54 EST 2020


On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 05:40:48PM +0000, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> Hi Mark,
> 
> On Fri, Nov 13, 2020 at 12:49:34PM +0000, Mark Rutland wrote:
> > We no longer need to flip UAO to access kernel memory under KERNEL_DS,
> > and head.S unconditionally clears UAO for all kernel configurations via
> > an ERET in init_kernel_el. Thus, we don't need to dynamically flip UAO,
> > nor do we need to context-switch it. However, we do need to clear UAO
> > (and set PAN) during SDEI entry.
> 
> If the kernel never sets the UAO bit, why do we need to clear it during
> SDEI entry?

The fear was taking an SDEI event from a VM which had UAO set, with the
SDEI FW not clearing UAO.

That might not happen in practice because while the spec implies that
could happen, TF-A currently generates a new PSTATE from scratch, and
going forward the spec will be aligned with regular exception entry
rules for PSTATE (so UAO will be cleared automatically).

So we can probably drop the clearing of UAO if you prefer.

Thanks,
Mark.



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