[PATCH v2 7/9] arm64: entry: Reword comment about post_ttbr_update_workaround

Will Deacon will.deacon at arm.com
Mon Feb 5 08:41:30 PST 2018


On Sat, Feb 03, 2018 at 11:15:59AM +0000, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> On 29 January 2018 at 11:59, Will Deacon <will.deacon at arm.com> wrote:
> > We don't fully understand the Cavium ThunderX erratum, but it appears
> > that mapping the kernel as nG can lead to horrible consequences such as
> > attempting to execute userspace from kernel context. Since kpti isn't
> > enabled for these CPUs anyway, simplify the comment justifying the lack
> > of post_ttbr_update_workaround in the exception trampoline.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon at arm.com>
> > ---
> >  arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S | 12 ++----------
> >  1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S b/arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S
> > index b34e717d7597..fbe1444324b3 100644
> > --- a/arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S
> > +++ b/arch/arm64/kernel/entry.S
> > @@ -1013,16 +1013,8 @@ alternative_else_nop_endif
> >         orr     \tmp, \tmp, #USER_ASID_FLAG
> >         msr     ttbr1_el1, \tmp
> >         /*
> > -        * We avoid running the post_ttbr_update_workaround here because the
> > -        * user and kernel ASIDs don't have conflicting mappings, so any
> > -        * "blessing" as described in:
> > -        *
> > -        *   http://lkml.kernel.org/r/56BB848A.6060603@caviumnetworks.com
> > -        *
> > -        * will not hurt correctness. Whilst this may partially defeat the
> > -        * point of using split ASIDs in the first place, it avoids
> > -        * the hit of invalidating the entire I-cache on every return to
> > -        * userspace.
> > +        * We avoid running the post_ttbr_update_workaround here because
> > +        * it's only needed by Cavium ThunderX, which doesn't require kpti.
> 
> 'requires KPTI to be disabled' sounds more accurate to me

Fair enough. I'll leave this for Catalin to merge in.

Will



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