Hi, Andy and Yu

> From: Zheng, Lv
> Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 4:52 PM
> 
> Hi,
> 
> > From: Chen, Yu C
> > Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 2:13 PM
> >
> > Hi, Andy
> >
> > > From: Andy Lutomirski [mailto:luto@amacapital.net]
> > > Sent: Tuesday, December 15, 2015 7:28 AM
> > >
> > > On Wed, Dec 2, 2015 at 6:43 PM, Lv Zheng <lv.zheng@intel.com> wrote:
> > > > From: Chen Yu <yu.c.chen@intel.com>
> > > >
> > > > This patch implements acpi_os_readable(). The function is used by
> > > > ACPICA AML debugger to validate user specified pointers for dumping
> > > > the memory as ACPICA descriptor objects.
> > > >
> > [cut]
> > > >
> > > > +bool __acpi_memory_readable(void *pointer, size_t length) {
> > > > +       unsigned long obj_start, obj_end;
> > > > +       unsigned long start_pfn, end_pfn;
> > >
> > > What does "readable" mean in this context?
> 
> [Lv Zheng]
> The function is used by ACPICA "dump" command.
> It accepts an arbitrary address, and tries to dump the memory block specified
> by the address as an acpi_object.
> You can try: "help dump" in the interactive mode to confirm.
> While acpi_object is actually all created by kmalloc.
[Lv Zheng] 
This statement might be wrong, Let me Cc Bob to confirm.

Hi, Bob

Do we have statically allocated acpi_objects?
If we have, we need to change this patch to allow high map .data/.bss segments addresses to pass this check.

Thanks and best regards
-Lv

> So we just check if the specified memory block belongs to the kernel heap.
> The readable/writeable is not so meaningful here as the kernel heap should
> always be both readable and writeable.
> 
> We do a lot of checks in this function in order to allow it to:
> 1. return true if "pointer" belongs to kernel heap when "length" is 0;
> 2. return false if "pointer" doesn't belong to kernel heap when "length" is 0;
> 3. return true if "pointer ~ pointer+length-1" belongs to a kernel heap range;
> 4. return false if "pointer ~ pointer+length-1" doesn't belong to any kernel heap
> range.
> 
> These checks are weak, but can help to avoid panics if users specify wrong
> pointers for the "dump" command.
> 
> > 'readable' means :  the address provided by the user,
> > is a dynamically allocated  virtual address -
> > because  the  acpi address space are allocated by 'kmalloc',
> > acpi debugger must check if this address is a valid 'kmalloc'
> > address before accessing it.
> >
> > This function does the sanity check that, the vitual address is a:
> > 1.   dynamically allocated address (beyond PAGE_OFFSET , but lower
> > than high_memory, VMALLOC_START, eg)
> > 2.  besides, the physical address must be direct-mapped(so it would not be a
> > hole).
> 
> [Lv Zheng]
> There is a special case (possibly hackish) on x86_64.
> x86_64 kernel maps kernel image twice.
> One is called as high map and the other is called as low map.
> 
> Since we use __pa() to convert a virtual address,
> If the virtual address belongs to the high map range, __pa() which takes care of
> converting high map addresses actually returns a physical address where there
> should also be low map mappings ready for it.
> Thus the converted PFN from the result of __pa() will be treated as valid.
> 
> But this doesn't mean there is a high map for this virtual address.
> x86_64 kernel drops several pages from high map in cleanup_highmap().
> So accessing a virtual address that belongs to the holes whose page mappings
> have been dropped in this function could still result in panic due to no mappings.
> By enforcing this check, we can avoid such a case.
> Actually no acpi_object's virtual address will belong to high map range.
> 
> Thanks and best regards
> -Lv