• Nicolai Stange's avatar
    powerpc/64s: Clear on-stack exception marker upon exception return · eddd0b33
    Nicolai Stange authored
    The ppc64 specific implementation of the reliable stacktracer,
    save_stack_trace_tsk_reliable(), bails out and reports an "unreliable
    trace" whenever it finds an exception frame on the stack. Stack frames
    are classified as exception frames if the STACK_FRAME_REGS_MARKER
    magic, as written by exception prologues, is found at a particular
    location.
    
    However, as observed by Joe Lawrence, it is possible in practice that
    non-exception stack frames can alias with prior exception frames and
    thus, that the reliable stacktracer can find a stale
    STACK_FRAME_REGS_MARKER on the stack. It in turn falsely reports an
    unreliable stacktrace and blocks any live patching transition to
    finish. Said condition lasts until the stack frame is
    overwritten/initialized by function call or other means.
    
    In principle, we could mitigate this by making the exception frame
    classification condition in save_stack_trace_tsk_reliable() stronger:
    in addition to testing for STACK_FRAME_REGS_MARKER, we could also take
    into account that for all exceptions executing on the kernel stack
      - their stack frames's backlink pointers always match what is saved
        in their pt_regs instance's ->gpr[1] slot and that
      - their exception frame size equals STACK_INT_FRAME_SIZE, a value
        uncommonly large for non-exception frames.
    
    However, while these are currently true, relying on them would make
    the reliable stacktrace implementation more sensitive towards future
    changes in the exception entry code. Note that false negatives, i.e.
    not detecting exception frames, would silently break the live patching
    consistency model.
    
    Furthermore, certain other places (diagnostic stacktraces, perf, xmon)
    rely on STACK_FRAME_REGS_MARKER as well.
    
    Make the exception exit code clear the on-stack
    STACK_FRAME_REGS_MARKER for those exceptions running on the "normal"
    kernel stack and returning to kernelspace: because the topmost frame
    is ignored by the reliable stack tracer anyway, returns to userspace
    don't need to take care of clearing the marker.
    
    Furthermore, as I don't have the ability to test this on Book 3E or 32
    bits, limit the change to Book 3S and 64 bits.
    
    Fixes: df78d3f6 ("powerpc/livepatch: Implement reliable stack tracing for the consistency model")
    Reported-by: default avatarJoe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarNicolai Stange <nstange@suse.de>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarJoe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarMichael Ellerman <mpe@ellerman.id.au>
    eddd0b33
entry_64.S 31.8 KB