• Sean Christopherson's avatar
    x86/vdso: Add support for exception fixup in vDSO functions · 8382c668
    Sean Christopherson authored
    Signals are a horrid little mechanism.  They are especially nasty in
    multi-threaded environments because signal state like handlers is global
    across the entire process.  But, signals are basically the only way that
    userspace can “gracefully” handle and recover from exceptions.
    
    The kernel generally does not like exceptions to occur during execution.
    But, exceptions are a fact of life and must be handled in some
    circumstances.  The kernel handles them by keeping a list of individual
    instructions which may cause exceptions.  Instead of truly handling the
    exception and returning to the instruction that caused it, the kernel
    instead restarts execution at a *different* instruction.  This makes it
    obvious to that thread of execution that the exception occurred and lets
    *that* code handle the exception instead of the handler.
    
    This is not dissimilar to the try/catch exceptions mechanisms that some
    programming languages have, but applied *very* surgically to single
    instructions.  It effectively changes the visible architecture of the
    instruction.
    
    Problem
    =======
    
    SGX generates a lot of signals, and the code to enter and exit enclaves and
    muck with signal handling is truly horrid.  At the same time, an approach
    like kernel exception fixup can not be easily applied to userspace
    instructions because it changes the visible instruction architecture.
    
    Solution
    ========
    
    The vDSO is a special page of kernel-provided instructions that run in
    userspace.  Any userspace calling into the vDSO knows that it is special.
    This allows the kernel a place to legitimately rewrite the user/kernel
    contract and change instruction behavior.
    
    Add support for fixing up exceptions that occur while executing in the
    vDSO.  This replaces what could traditionally only be done with signal
    handling.
    
    This new mechanism will be used to replace previously direct use of SGX
    instructions by userspace.
    
    Just introduce the vDSO infrastructure.  Later patches will actually
    replace signal generation with vDSO exception fixup.
    Suggested-by: default avatarAndy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarSean Christopherson <sean.j.christopherson@intel.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJarkko Sakkinen <jarkko@kernel.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarBorislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
    Acked-by: default avatarJethro Beekman <jethro@fortanix.com>
    Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20201112220135.165028-17-jarkko@kernel.org
    8382c668
vdso.h 1.28 KB