gcc-8: arm64/kvm/pauth.: Error: unknown architectural extension `pauth'

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Mon, Apr 22, 2024, at 11:40, Mark Rutland wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 11:25:25AM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
>> On Mon, Apr 22, 2024, at 11:13, Mark Rutland wrote:
>> > On Mon, Apr 22, 2024 at 02:04:43PM +0530, Naresh Kamboju wrote:
>> > Given the minimum supported toolchain comes with an assembler that doesn't
>> > necessarily support ARMv8.3, I reckon we'll either have to make NV pauth
>> > support depend upon AS_HAS_ARMV8_3, or manually assemble the PACGA instruction.
>> >
>> > I suspect the latter is the better option.
>> 
>> The .config linked from the report shows
>> 
>> CONFIG_AS_VERSION=23101
>> CONFIG_ARM64_PTR_AUTH_KERNEL=y
>> CONFIG_AS_HAS_ARMV8_3=y
>> 
>> So it gets detected as supporting ARMv8.3. Is this the wrong
>> conditional to check, or does it get misdetected for an unsupported
>> assembler?
>
> I suspect that means the 'pauth' arch extension was added after armv8.3
> support, and the assembler supports `-march=armv8.3-a` but does not support
> `.arch_extension pauth`. So for this code, it'd be wrong to check for
> AS_HAS_ARMV8_3, unless we used `.march armv8.3-a`, but even then that'd still
> mean configurations where we couldn't support this code.
>
> I reckon manually assembing the PACGA is the best thing to do; that sidesteps
> the need for either `.arch_extension pauth` or `.march armv8.3-a`, and aligns
> with what we do for CONFIG_ARM64_PTR_AUTH=y generally.
>
> Elsewhere in the kernel where we check for CONFIG_AS_HAS_ARMV8_3, we rely on
> ARM64_ASM_PREAMBLE containing `.arch armv8.3-a` or a later version that implies
> the presence of ARMv8.3-A instructions, and so pauth usage elsewhere is fine.

I tested with the old binutils versions I have here and found
that anything that supports v8.3 also understands pacga, but
'.arch_extension pauth' only works in binutils-2.35 and higher,
presumably because it started out as a v8.3+ feature but was
later turned into an optional extension for all versions.

Since there is a Kconfig check for armv8.3-a support already, I think
it's safe to just drop the .arch_extension pauth.

      Arnd