The pushf/popf in switch_to are ONLY used to switch IOPL. Making this
explicit in C code is more clear. This pushf/popf pair was added as a
bugfix for leaking IOPL to unprivileged processes when using
sysenter/sysexit based system calls (sysexit does not restore flags).
When requesting an IOPL change in sys_iopl(), it is just as easy to change
the current flags and the flags in the stack image (in case an IRET is
required), but there is no reason to force an IRET if we came in from the
SYSENTER path.
This change is the minimal solution for supporting a paravirtualized Linux
kernel that allows user processes to run with I/O privilege. Other
solutions require radical rewrites of part of the low level fault / system
call handling code, or do not fully support sysenter based system calls.
Unfortunately, this added one field to the thread_struct. But as a bonus,
on P4, the fastest time measured for switch_to() went from 312 to 260
cycles, a win of about 17% in the fast case through this performance
critical path.
Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
i386 inline assembler cleanup.
This change encapsulates descriptor and task register management. Also,
it is possible to improve assembler generation in two cases; savesegment
may store the value in a register instead of a memory location, which
allows GCC to optimize stack variables into registers, and MOV MEM, SEG
is always a 16-bit write to memory, making the casting in math-emu
unnecessary.
Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
i386 Inline asm cleanup. Use cr/dr accessor functions.
Also, a potential bugfix. Also, some CR accessors really should be volatile.
Reads from CR0 (numeric state may change in an exception handler), writes to
CR4 (flipping CR4.TSD) and reads from CR2 (page fault) prevent instruction
re-ordering. I did not add memory clobber to CR3 / CR4 / CR0 updates, as it
was not there to begin with, and in no case should kernel memory be clobbered,
except when doing a TLB flush, which already has memory clobber.
I noticed that page invalidation does not have a memory clobber. I can't find
a bug as a result, but there is definitely a potential for a bug here:
#define __flush_tlb_single(addr) \
__asm__ __volatile__("invlpg %0": :"m" (*(char *) addr))
Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
The new i386/x86_64 assemblers no longer accept instructions for moving
between a segment register and a 32bit memory location, i.e.,
movl (%eax),%ds
movl %ds,(%eax)
To generate instructions for moving between a segment register and a
16bit memory location without the 16bit operand size prefix, 0x66,
mov (%eax),%ds
mov %ds,(%eax)
should be used. It will work with both new and old assemblers. The
assembler starting from 2.16.90.0.1 will also support
movw (%eax),%ds
movw %ds,(%eax)
without the 0x66 prefix. I am enclosing patches for 2.4 and 2.6 kernels
here. The resulting kernel binaries should be unchanged as before, with
old and new assemblers, if gcc never generates memory access for
unsigned gsindex;
asm volatile("movl %%gs,%0" : "=g" (gsindex));
If gcc does generate memory access for the code above, the upper bits
in gsindex are undefined and the new assembler doesn't allow it.
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Initial git repository build. I'm not bothering with the full history,
even though we have it. We can create a separate "historical" git
archive of that later if we want to, and in the meantime it's about
3.2GB when imported into git - space that would just make the early
git days unnecessarily complicated, when we don't have a lot of good
infrastructure for it.
Let it rip!
Zachary Amsden