Re: [PATCH] arm64/alternatives: use subsections for replacement sequences

[Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>]

On Wed, 1 Jul 2020 at 19:30, Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 1 Jul 2020 at 19:01, Dave P Martin <dave.martin@arm.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Jun 30, 2020 at 10:19:21AM +0200, Ard Biesheuvel wrote:
> > > When building very large kernels, the logic that emits replacement
> > > sequences for alternatives fails when relative branches are present
> > > in the code that is emitted into the .altinstr_replacement section
> > > and patched in at the original site and fixed up. The reason is that
> > > the linker will insert veneers if relative branches go out of range,
> > > and due to the relative distance of the .altinstr_replacement from
> > > the .text section where its branch targets usually live, veneers
> > > may be emitted at the end of the .altinstr_replacement section, with
> > > the relative branches in the sequence pointed at the veneers instead
> > > of the actual target.
> > >
> > > The alternatives patching logic will attempt to fix up the branch to
> > > point to its original target, which will be the veneer in this case,
> > > but given that the patch site is likely to be far away as well, it
> > > will be out of range and so patching will fail. There are other cases
> > > where these veneers are problematic, e.g., when the target of the
> > > branch is in .text while the patch site is in .init.text, in which
> > > case putting the replacement sequence inside .text may not help either.
> > >
> > > So let's use subsections to emit the replacement code as closely as
> > > possible to the patch site, to ensure that veneers are only likely to
> > > be emitted if they are required at the patch site as well, in which
> > > case they will be in range for the replacement sequence both before
> > > and after it is transported to the patch site.
> > >
> > > This will prevent alternative sequences in non-init code from being
> > > released from memory after boot, but this is tolerable given that the
> > > entire section is only 512 KB on an allyesconfig build (which weighs in
> > > at 500+ MB for the entire Image). Also, note that modules today carry
> > > the replacement sequences in non-init sections as well, and any of
> > > those that target init code will be emitted into init sections after
> > > this change.
> > >
> > > This fixes an early crash when booting an allyesconfig kernel on a
> > > system where any of the alternatives sequences containing relative
> > > branches are activated at boot (e.g., ARM64_HAS_PAN on TX2)
> > >
> > > Cc: Suzuki K Poulose <suzuki.poulose@arm.com>
> > > Cc: James Morse <james.morse@arm.com>
> > > Cc: Andre Przywara <andre.przywara@arm.com>
> > > Cc: Dave P Martin <dave.martin@arm.com>
> > > Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ardb@kernel.org>
> > > ---
> > >  arch/arm64/include/asm/alternative.h | 16 ++++++++--------
> > >  arch/arm64/kernel/vmlinux.lds.S      |  3 ---
> > >  2 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)
> > >
> > > diff --git a/arch/arm64/include/asm/alternative.h b/arch/arm64/include/asm/alternative.h
> > > index 5e5dc05d63a0..12f0eb56a1cc 100644
> > > --- a/arch/arm64/include/asm/alternative.h
> > > +++ b/arch/arm64/include/asm/alternative.h
> > > @@ -73,11 +73,11 @@ static inline void apply_alternatives_module(void *start, size_t length) { }
> > >       ".pushsection .altinstructions,\"a\"\n"                         \
> > >       ALTINSTR_ENTRY(feature)                                         \
> > >       ".popsection\n"                                                 \
> > > -     ".pushsection .altinstr_replacement, \"a\"\n"                   \
> > > +     ".subsection 1\n"                                               \
> >
> > This uses subsections in existing sections.  Could that interfere with
> > existing (or future) uses of subsections?  (I've not checked whether
> > there actually are such uses.  I'm also assuming that clobbering the
> > invoker's idea of what section is .previous doesn't matter.)
> >
>
> It shouldn't matter, really. You can use different indexes for the
> subsection, but since the execution never flows from one subsection
> into the next, all that matters is that they are 'somewhere else'
>
> As for the use of .previous - the idea is that this does not affect
> the contents of the section stack, which I think makes sense. We could
> use '.pushsection .text, 1' as well to enter another subsection in
> .text, but that means we keep the .text vs .init.text issue that this
> patch solves.
>
> > Another wrinkle: the replacement code now becomes executable, whereas
> > I think it was previously in rodata.  I'm not sure how much this
> > matters, but it might be a source of gadgets.
> >
>
> True. Perhaps we need to get rid of relative branches in alternative
> sequences entirely - see below.
>
> >
> > A different option would be to add an explicitly veneered branch macro
> > for use in alternatives, maybe adrp+add+br.  For BTI compatility, we'd
> > need a bti j or equivalent at the destination, which might or might not
> > be easy to achieve -- mind you, I think we theoretically need that
> > anyway for veneers to work properly in all cases.
> >
> > Because we would define the exact instruction sequence, the
> > alternatives code could probably replace it with a direct branch if the
> > actual destination is close enough.  The downside is that it wouldn't
> > be a single instruction any more, and there would be some overhead for
> > conditional branches if we replace the unneeded insns with NOPs.
> >
>
> Yeah, this becomes quite hairy very quickly, especially because now
> you need to allocate a spare register each time you do this.
>
> One other option is to simply disallow branches in the alternative
> sequences: I spotted three occurrences [0] that are quite easily
> fixed, by inverting the condition so that the relative branch is
> emitted in place, and the alternative sequence is just NOPs.

[0] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/ardb/linux.git/log/?h=arm64-alt-branches

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