[PATCH 8/8] arm64: Rewrite __arch_clear_user()

Robin Murphy robin.murphy at arm.com
Wed May 12 04:31:39 PDT 2021


On 2021-05-12 11:48, Mark Rutland wrote:
> On Tue, May 11, 2021 at 05:12:38PM +0100, Robin Murphy wrote:
>> Now that we're always using STTR variants rather than abstracting two
>> different addressing modes, the user_ldst macro here is frankly more
>> obfuscating than helpful.
> 
> FWIW, I completely agree; the user_ldst macros are a historical artifact
> and I'm happy to see them go!
> 
>> Rewrite __arch_clear_user() with regular
>> USER() annotations so that it's clearer what's going on, and take the
>> opportunity to minimise the branchiness in the most common paths, which
>> also allows the exception fixup to return a more accurate result.
> 
> IIUC this isn't always accurate for the {4,2,1}-byte cases; example
> below. I'm not sure whether that's intentional since the commit message
> says "more accurate" rather than "accurate".

Indeed, the "more" was definitely significant :)

>> Signed-off-by: Robin Murphy <robin.murphy at arm.com>
>> ---
>>   arch/arm64/lib/clear_user.S | 42 +++++++++++++++++++------------------
>>   1 file changed, 22 insertions(+), 20 deletions(-)
>>
>> diff --git a/arch/arm64/lib/clear_user.S b/arch/arm64/lib/clear_user.S
>> index af9afcbec92c..1005345b4066 100644
>> --- a/arch/arm64/lib/clear_user.S
>> +++ b/arch/arm64/lib/clear_user.S
>> @@ -1,12 +1,9 @@
>>   /* SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only */
>>   /*
>> - * Based on arch/arm/lib/clear_user.S
>> - *
>> - * Copyright (C) 2012 ARM Ltd.
>> + * Copyright (C) 2021 Arm Ltd.
>>    */
>> -#include <linux/linkage.h>
>>   
>> -#include <asm/asm-uaccess.h>
>> +#include <linux/linkage.h>
>>   #include <asm/assembler.h>
>>   
>>   	.text
>> @@ -19,25 +16,30 @@
>>    *
>>    * Alignment fixed up by hardware.
>>    */
>> +	.p2align 4
>>   SYM_FUNC_START(__arch_clear_user)
> 
> Say we're called with size in x1 == 0x7
> 
>> -	mov	x2, x1			// save the size for fixup return
>> +	add	x2, x0, x1
>>   	subs	x1, x1, #8
>>   	b.mi	2f
> 
> ... here we'll skip to the 4-byte case at 2f ...
> 
>>   1:
>> -user_ldst 9f, sttr, xzr, x0, 8
>> +USER(9f, sttr	xzr, [x0])
>> +	add	x0, x0, #8
>>   	subs	x1, x1, #8
>> -	b.pl	1b
>> -2:	adds	x1, x1, #4
>> -	b.mi	3f
>> -user_ldst 9f, sttr, wzr, x0, 4
>> -	sub	x1, x1, #4
>> -3:	adds	x1, x1, #2
>> -	b.mi	4f
>> -user_ldst 9f, sttrh, wzr, x0, 2
>> -	sub	x1, x1, #2
>> -4:	adds	x1, x1, #1
>> -	b.mi	5f
>> -user_ldst 9f, sttrb, wzr, x0, 0
>> +	b.hi	1b
>> +USER(9f, sttr	xzr, [x2, #-8])
>> +	mov	x0, #0
>> +	ret
>> +
>> +2:	tbz	x1, #2, 3f
> 
> ... bit 2 is non-zero, so we continue ...
> 
>> +USER(9f, sttr	wzr, [x0])
> 
> ... and if this faults, the fixup will report the correct address ...
> 
>> +USER(9f, sttr	wzr, [x2, #-4])
> 
> ... but if this faults, teh fixup handler will report that we didn't
> copy all 7 bytes, rather than just the last 3, since we didn't update x0
> after the first 4-byte STTR.
> 
> We could update x0 inline, or add separate fixup handlers to account for
> that out-of-line.
> 
> If we think that under-estimating is fine, I reckon it'd be worth a
> comment to make that clear.

Indeed for smaller amounts there's no change in fixup behaviour at all, 
but I have to assume that underestimating by up to 100% is probably OK 
since we've been underestimating by fully 100% for nearly 10 years now. 
I don't believe it's worth having any more complexity than necessary for 
the fault case - grepping for clear_user() usage suggests that nobody 
really cares about the return value beyond whether it's zero or not, so 
the minor "improvement" here is more of a nice-to-have TBH.

The existing comment doesn't actually explain anything either, which is 
why I didn't replace it, but I'm happy to add something if you like.

Cheers,
Robin.

> 
> Thanks,
> Mark.
> 
>> +	mov	x0, #0
>> +	ret
>> +
>> +3:	tbz	x1, #1, 4f
>> +USER(9f, sttrh	wzr, [x0])
>> +4:	tbz	x1, #0, 5f
>> +USER(9f, sttrb	wzr, [x2, #-1])
>>   5:	mov	x0, #0
>>   	ret
>>   SYM_FUNC_END(__arch_clear_user)
>> @@ -45,6 +47,6 @@ EXPORT_SYMBOL(__arch_clear_user)
>>   
>>   	.section .fixup,"ax"
>>   	.align	2
>> -9:	mov	x0, x2			// return the original size
>> +9:	sub	x0, x2, x0
>>   	ret
>>   	.previous
>> -- 
>> 2.21.0.dirty
>>
>>
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