[PATCH v2 0/5] Improve arm64 pkeys handling in signal delivery

Kevin Brodsky kevin.brodsky at arm.com
Wed Oct 23 08:05:06 PDT 2024


This series is a follow-up to Joey's Permission Overlay Extension (POE)
series [1] that recently landed on mainline. The goal is to improve the
way we handle the register that governs which pkeys/POIndex are
accessible (POR_EL0) during signal delivery. As things stand, we may
unexpectedly fail to write the signal frame on the stack because POR_EL0
is not reset before the uaccess operations. See patch 3 for more details
and the main changes this series brings.

A similar series landed recently for x86/MPK [2]; the present series
aims at aligning arm64 with x86. Worth noting: once the signal frame is
written, POR_EL0 is still set to POR_EL0_INIT, granting access to pkey 0
only. This means that a program that sets up an alternate signal stack
with a non-zero pkey will need some assembly trampoline to set POR_EL0
before invoking the real signal handler, as discussed here [3]. This is
not ideal, but it makes experimentation with pkeys in signal handlers
possible while waiting for a potential interface to control the pkey
state when delivering a signal. See Pierre's reply [4] for more
information about use-cases and a potential interface.

The x86 series also added kselftests to ensure that no spurious SIGSEGV
occurs during signal delivery regardless of which pkey is accessible at
the point where the signal is delivered. This series adapts those
kselftests to allow running them on arm64 (patch 4-5).

Finally patch 2 is a clean-up following feedback on Joey's series [5].

I have tested this series on arm64 and x86_64 (booting and running the
protection_keys and pkey_sighandler_tests mm kselftests).

v1..v2:
* In setup_rt_frame(), ensured that POR_EL0 is reset to its original
  value if we fail to deliver the signal (addresses Catalin's concern [6]).
* Renamed *unpriv_access* to *user_access* in patch 3 (suggestion from
  Dave).
* Made what patch 1-2 do explicit in the commit message body (suggestion
  from Dave).

- Kevin

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20240822151113.1479789-1-joey.gouly@arm.com/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20240802061318.2140081-1-aruna.ramakrishna@oracle.com/
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/CABi2SkWxNkP2O7ipkP67WKz0-LV33e5brReevTTtba6oKUfHRw@mail.gmail.com/
[4] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/87plns8owh.fsf@arm.com/
[5] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20241015114116.GA19334@willie-the-truck/
[6] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/Zw6D2waVyIwYE7wd@arm.com/

Cc: akpm at linux-foundation.org
Cc: anshuman.khandual at arm.com
Cc: aruna.ramakrishna at oracle.com
Cc: broonie at kernel.org
Cc: catalin.marinas at arm.com
Cc: dave.hansen at linux.intel.com
Cc: dave.martin at arm.com
Cc: jeffxu at chromium.org
Cc: joey.gouly at arm.com
Cc: pierre.langlois at arm.com
Cc: shuah at kernel.org
Cc: sroettger at google.com
Cc: will at kernel.org
Cc: linux-kselftest at vger.kernel.org
Cc: x86 at kernel.org


Kevin Brodsky (5):
  arm64: signal: Remove unused macro
  arm64: signal: Remove unnecessary check when saving POE state
  arm64: signal: Improve POR_EL0 handling to avoid uaccess failures
  selftests/mm: Use generic pkey register manipulation
  selftests/mm: Enable pkey_sighandler_tests on arm64

 arch/arm64/kernel/signal.c                    |  95 +++++++++++++---
 tools/testing/selftests/mm/Makefile           |   8 +-
 tools/testing/selftests/mm/pkey-arm64.h       |   1 +
 tools/testing/selftests/mm/pkey-x86.h         |   2 +
 .../selftests/mm/pkey_sighandler_tests.c      | 101 +++++++++++++-----
 5 files changed, 162 insertions(+), 45 deletions(-)

-- 
2.43.0




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