Re: [PATCH 3.13 044/187] x86_64/entry/xen: Do not invoke espfix64 on Xen

[Ben Hutchings]

On Mon, 2014-09-15 at 15:07 -0700, Kamal Mostafa wrote:
> 3.13.11.7 -stable review patch.  If anyone has any objections, please let me know.
> 
> ------------------
> 
> From: Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> 
> commit 7209a75d2009dbf7745e2fd354abf25c3deb3ca3 upstream.
> 
> This moves the espfix64 logic into native_iret.  To make this work,
> it gets rid of the native patch for INTERRUPT_RETURN:
> INTERRUPT_RETURN on native kernels is now 'jmp native_iret'.
> 
> This changes the 16-bit SS behavior on Xen from OOPSing to leaking
> some bits of the Xen hypervisor's RSP (I think).
> 
> [ hpa: this is a nonzero cost on native, but probably not enough to
>   measure. Xen needs to fix this in their own code, probably doing
>   something equivalent to espfix64. ]
> 
> Signed-off-by: Andy Lutomirski <luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/7b8f1d8ef6597cb16ae004a43c56980a7de3cf94.1406129132.git.luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Signed-off-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Kamal Mostafa <kamal@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[...]

There's another fix related to espfix on Xen, commit 8762e5092828
("x86/espfix/xen: Fix allocation of pages for paravirt page tables").
But I'm not sure whether it's actually needed after this.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Beware of programmers who carry screwdrivers. - Leonard Brandwein

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