Re: [RFC PATCH v2 2/8] arm64: Implement frame types

From: "Madhavan T. Venkataraman" <madvenka@linux.microsoft.com>
To: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
Cc: mark.rutland@arm.com, jpoimboe@redhat.com, jthierry@redhat.com,
	catalin.marinas@arm.com, will@kernel.org,
	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	live-patching@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH v2 2/8] arm64: Implement frame types
Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2021 09:40:46 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <e8d596c3-b1ec-77a6-f387-92ecd2ebfceb@linux.microsoft.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210319132208.GD5619@sirena.org.uk>

On 3/19/21 8:22 AM, Mark Brown wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2021 at 05:22:49PM -0500, Madhavan T. Venkataraman wrote:
>> On 3/18/21 12:40 PM, Mark Brown wrote:
> 
>>> Unless I'm misreading what's going on here this is more trying to set a
>>> type for the stack as a whole than for a specific stack frame.  I'm also
>>> finding this a bit confusing as the unwinder already tracks things it
>>> calls frame types and it handles types that aren't covered here like
>>> SDEI.  At the very least there's a naming issue here.
> 
>> Both these frames are on the task stack. So, it is not a stack type.
> 
> OTOH it's also not something that applies to every frame but only to the
> base frame from each stack which I think was more where I was coming
> from there.  In any case, the issue is also that there's already another
> thing that the unwinder calls a frame type so there's at least that
> collision which needs to be resolved if nothing else.
> 

The base frame from each stack as well as intermediate marker frames such
as the EL1 frame and the Ftrace frame.

As for the frame type, I will try to come up with a better name.

>>> Taking a step back though do we want to be tracking this via pt_regs?
>>> It's reliant on us robustly finding the correct pt_regs and on having
>>> the things that make the stack unreliable explicitly go in and set the
>>> appropriate type.  That seems like it will be error prone, I'd been
>>> expecting to do something more like using sections to filter code for
>>> unreliable features based on the addresses of the functions we find on
>>> the stack or similar.  This could still go wrong of course but there's
>>> fewer moving pieces, and especially fewer moving pieces specific to
>>> reliable stack trace.
> 
>> In that case, I suggest doing both. That is, check the type as well
>> as specific functions. For instance, in the EL1 pt_regs, in addition
>> to the above checks, check the PC against el1_sync(), el1_irq() and
>> el1_error(). I have suggested this in the cover letter.
> 
>> If this is OK with you, we could do that. We want to make really sure that
>> nothing goes wrong with detecting the exception frame.
> 
> ...
> 
>> If you dislike the frame type, I could remove it and just do the
>> following checks:
> 
>> 	FP == pt_regs->regs[29]
>> 	PC == pt_regs->pc
>> 	and the address check against el1_*() functions
> 
>> and similar changes for EL0 as well.
> 
>> I still think that the frame type check makes it more robust.
> 
> Yeah, we know the entry points so they can serve the same role as
> checking an explicitly written value.  It does mean one less operation
> on exception entry, though I'm not sure that's that a big enough
> overhead to actually worry about.  I don't have *super* strong opinons
> against adding the explicitly written value other than it being one more
> thing we don't otherwise use which we have to get right for reliable
> stack trace, there's a greater risk of bitrot if it's not something that
> we ever look at outside of the reliable stack trace code.
> 

So, I will add the address checks for robustness. I will think some more
about the frame type.

>>>> EL1_FRAME
>>>> 	EL1 exception frame.
> 
>>> We do trap into EL2 as well, the patch will track EL2 frames as EL1
>>> frames.  Even if we can treat them the same the naming ought to be
>>> clear.
> 
>> Are you referring to ARMv8.1 VHE extension where the kernel can run
>> at EL2? Could you elaborate? I thought that EL2 was basically for
>> Hypervisors.
> 
> KVM is the main case, yes - IIRC otherwise it's mainly error handlers
> but I might be missing something.  We do recommend that the kernel is
> started at EL2 where possible.
> 
> Actually now I look again it's just not adding anything on EL2 entries
> at all, they use a separate set of macros which aren't updated - this
> will only update things for EL0 and EL1 entries so my comment above
> about this tracking EL2 as EL1 isn't accurate.
> 

OK.

Madhavan

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