Re: [PATCH] x86/build: Unilaterally disable -fcf-protection

[Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>]

On 13/05/2020 15:13, Jan Beulich wrote:
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> On 13.05.2020 15:55, Andrew Cooper wrote:
>> Xen doesn't support CET-IBT yet.  At a minimum, logic is required to enable it
>> for supervisor use, but the livepatch functionality needs to learn not to
>> overwrite ENDBR64 instructions.
>>
>> Furthermore, Ubuntu enables -fcf-protection by default, along with a buggy
>> version of GCC-9 which objects to it in combination with
>> -mindirect-branch=thunk-extern (Fixed in GCC 10, 9.4).
>>
>> Various objects (Xen boot path, Rombios 32 stubs) require .text to be at the
>> beginning of the object.  These paths explode when .note.gnu.properties gets
>> put ahead of .text and we end up executing the notes data.
>>
>> Disable -fcf-protection for all embedded objects.
>>
>> Reported-by: Jason Andryuk <jandryuk@gmail.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>
> For the immediate purpose
> Reviewed-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>

Thanks.

>
> I wonder however ...
>
>> --- a/Config.mk
>> +++ b/Config.mk
>> @@ -205,6 +205,7 @@ APPEND_CFLAGS += $(foreach i, $(APPEND_INCLUDES), -I$(i))
>>  
>>  EMBEDDED_EXTRA_CFLAGS := -nopie -fno-stack-protector -fno-stack-protector-all
>>  EMBEDDED_EXTRA_CFLAGS += -fno-exceptions -fno-asynchronous-unwind-tables
>> +EMBEDDED_EXTRA_CFLAGS += -fcf-protection=none
> ... whether this isn't going to bite us once some of the consumers
> of this variable want to enable some different mode.

I'm not overly happy with EMBEDDED_EXTRA_CFLAGS as a concept, but these
build fixes do need backporting.

All embedded targets may in principle use some/all of these options at
some point in the future.

~Andrew