From: Petr Mladek <pmladek@suse.com>
To: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Miroslav Benes <mbenes@suse.cz>, Jiri Kosina <jikos@kernel.org>,
Jason Baron <jbaron@akamai.com>,
Joe Lawrence <joe.lawrence@redhat.com>,
Jessica Yu <jeyu@kernel.org>,
Evgenii Shatokhin <eshatokhin@virtuozzo.com>,
live-patching@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v12 06/12] livepatch: Simplify API by removing registration step
Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2018 13:14:44 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20181024111444.nf2vhajbjz2rf6cg@pathway.suse.cz> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20181023163943.ex65stywf2cwqvep@treble>
On Tue 2018-10-23 11:39:43, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2018 at 03:25:10PM +0200, Petr Mladek wrote:
> > On Fri 2018-10-19 09:36:04, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> > > On Fri, Oct 19, 2018 at 02:16:19PM +0200, Miroslav Benes wrote:
> > > > On Thu, 18 Oct 2018, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:
> > > > > As long as we're talking about radical changes... how about we just
> > > > > don't allow disabling patches at all? Instead a patch can be replaced
> > > > > with a 'revert' patch, or an empty 'nop' patch. That would make our
> > > > > code simpler and also ensure there's an audit trail.
> > > > >
> > The revert operation allows to remove a livepatch stuck in the
> > transition without forcing.
>
> True, though I question the real world value of that.
We ended in this situation few times with kGraft when a kthread
was not annotated and migrated. We have not seen this with upstream
livepatch code yet but we shipped first product with it only few
months ago.
I would say that it is nice to have but it is not must to have.
> > One big problem would be how to keep the system consistent. You
> > would need to solve races between loading modules and livepatches
> > anyway.
> >
> > For example, you could not load fixed/patched modules when the system
> > is not fully patched yet. You would need to load the module and
> > the related livepatch at the same time and follow the consistency
> > model as we do now.
>
> Yeah, I think that's pretty much the crazy idea Miroslav mentioned. The
> patch would consist of several modules. The parent module would
> register the patch and patch vmlinux. Each child module would be
> associated with a to-be-patched module. The child modules could be
> loaded on demand, either by special klp code or by modprobe.
Yup, something like this.
> As you described, there would be some races to think about. However, it
> would also have some benefits.
>
> I *hope* it would mean we could get rid of a lot of our ugly hacks, like
>
> - klp symbols, klp relas
The access to external static symbols would still need so klp-specific
relocations.
> - preserving ELF data, PLT's, other horrible arch-specific things
> - klp.arch..altinstructions, klp.arch..parainstructions
> - manually calling apply_relocate_add()
Yup, these might be candidates to go.
> However... we might still need some of those things for another reason:
> to bypass exported symbol protections. It needs some more
> investigation.
>
> Given this discussion, I'm thinking there wouldn't be much to discuss at
> LPC for this topic unless we had a prototype to look at (which I won't
> have time to do). So I may drop my talk in favor of giving more time
> for other more tangible discussions.
Sounds reasonable. At least I would not be able to say much more about
it without seeing a more detailed proposal and ideally a prototype
code. That said, I definitely do not want to discourage you from
playing with the idea.
Best Regards,
Petr
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-10-24 11:14 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 34+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2018-08-28 14:35 [PATCH v12 00/12] Petr Mladek
2018-08-28 14:35 ` [PATCH v12 01/12] livepatch: Change void *new_func -> unsigned long new_addr in struct klp_func Petr Mladek
2018-08-31 8:37 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-08-28 14:35 ` [PATCH v12 02/12] livepatch: Helper macros to define livepatch structures Petr Mladek
2018-08-28 14:35 ` [PATCH v12 03/12] livepatch: Shuffle klp_enable_patch()/klp_disable_patch() code Petr Mladek
2018-08-31 8:38 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-08-28 14:35 ` [PATCH v12 04/12] livepatch: Consolidate klp_free functions Petr Mladek
2018-08-31 10:39 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-10-12 11:43 ` Petr Mladek
2018-08-28 14:35 ` [PATCH v12 05/12] livepatch: Refuse to unload only livepatches available during a forced transition Petr Mladek
2018-08-28 14:35 ` [PATCH v12 06/12] livepatch: Simplify API by removing registration step Petr Mladek
2018-09-05 9:34 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-10-12 13:01 ` Petr Mladek
2018-10-15 16:01 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-10-18 14:54 ` Petr Mladek
2018-10-18 15:30 ` Josh Poimboeuf
2018-10-19 12:16 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-10-19 14:36 ` Josh Poimboeuf
2018-10-22 13:25 ` Petr Mladek
2018-10-23 16:39 ` Josh Poimboeuf
2018-10-24 2:55 ` Josh Poimboeuf
2018-10-24 11:14 ` Petr Mladek [this message]
2018-08-28 14:35 ` [PATCH v12 07/12] livepatch: Use lists to manage patches, objects and functions Petr Mladek
2018-09-03 16:00 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-10-12 12:12 ` Petr Mladek
2018-08-28 14:35 ` [PATCH v12 08/12] livepatch: Add atomic replace Petr Mladek
2018-08-28 14:36 ` [PATCH v12 09/12] livepatch: Remove Nop structures when unused Petr Mladek
2018-09-04 14:50 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-08-28 14:36 ` [PATCH v12 10/12] livepatch: Atomic replace and cumulative patches documentation Petr Mladek
2018-09-04 15:15 ` Miroslav Benes
2018-08-28 14:36 ` [PATCH v12 11/12] livepatch: Remove ordering and refuse loading conflicting patches Petr Mladek
2018-08-28 14:36 ` [PATCH v12 12/12] selftests/livepatch: introduce tests Petr Mladek
2018-08-30 11:58 ` [PATCH v12 00/12] Miroslav Benes
2018-10-11 12:48 ` Petr Mladek
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