Re: Sleeping in user_access section

[Julien Thierry <julien.thierry@arm.com>]

On 23/11/18 09:57, hpa@zytor.com wrote:
> On November 23, 2018 1:27:02 AM PST, Julien Thierry <julien.thierry@arm.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I made an attempt at implementing the
>> user_access_begin()/user_access_end() macros along with the
>> get/put_user_unsafe() for arm64 by toggling the status of PAN (more or
>> less similar to x86's STAC/CTAC).
>>
>> With a small mistake in my patch, we realized that directly calling
>> function that could reschedule while in a user_access section could
>> lead to:
>>
>> - scheduling another task keeping the user_access status enabled
>> despite
>> the task never calling user_access_begin()
>>
>> - when re-scheduling the task that was mid user_access section,
>> user_access would be disabled and the task would fault on the next
>> get/put_user_unsafe.
>>
>>
>> This is because __switch_to does not alter the user_access status when
>> switching from next to prev (at least on arm64 we currently don't, and
>> by looking at the x86 code I don't think this is done either).
>>
>>
>>  From my understanding, this is not an issue when the task in
>> user_access mode gets scheduled out/in as a result of an interrupt as
>> PAN and EFLAGS.AC get saved/restore on exception entry/exit (at least I
>>
>> know it is the case for PAN, I am less sure for the x86 side).
>>
>>
>> So, the question is, should __switch_to take care of the user_access
>> status when scheduling new tasks? Or should there be a restriction
>> about
>> scheduling out a task with user_access mode enabled and maybe add a
>> warning if we can detect this?
>>
>> (Or did we miss something and this is not an issue on x86?)
>>
>> Thanks,
> 
> You should never call a sleeping function from a user_access section. It is intended for very limited regions.
> 

Thanks for the clarification.

Would it be worth documenting this somewhere? And add a check to detect 
such issues?

Also, those limited regions can be interrupted and preempted, but I 
guess you could consider the interrupted region being split into 
separate user_access regions, before and after the interrupt. Should it 
be stated that an exception/interrupt constitutes implicit 
user_access_end()/begin() when taken from/returning to a user_access region?

Thanks,

-- 
Julien Thierry