Go to file
Jeff Dike d67b569f5f [PATCH] uml: skas0 - separate kernel address space on stock hosts
UML has had two modes of operation - an insecure, slow mode (tt mode) in
which the kernel is mapped into every process address space which requires
no host kernel modifications, and a secure, faster mode (skas mode) in
which the UML kernel is in a separate host address space, which requires a
patch to the host kernel.

This patch implements something very close to skas mode for hosts which
don't support skas - I'm calling this skas0.  It provides the security of
the skas host patch, and some of the performance gains.

The two main things that are provided by the skas patch, /proc/mm and
PTRACE_FAULTINFO, are implemented in a way that require no host patch.

For the remote address space changing stuff (mmap, munmap, and mprotect),
we set aside two pages in the process above its stack, one of which
contains a little bit of code which can call mmap et al.

To update the address space, the system call information (system call
number and arguments) are written to the stub page above the code.  The
%esp is set to the beginning of the data, the %eip is set the the start of
the stub, and it repeatedly pops the information into its registers and
makes the system call until it sees a system call number of zero.  This is
to amortize the cost of the context switch across multiple address space
updates.

When the updates are done, it SIGSTOPs itself, and the kernel process
continues what it was doing.

For a PTRACE_FAULTINFO replacement, we set up a SIGSEGV handler in the
child, and let it handle segfaults rather than nullifying them.  The
handler is in the same page as the mmap stub.  The second page is used as
the stack.  The handler reads cr2 and err from the sigcontext, sticks them
at the base of the stack in a faultinfo struct, and SIGSTOPs itself.  The
kernel then reads the faultinfo and handles the fault.

A complication on x86_64 is that this involves resetting the registers to
the segfault values when the process is inside the kill system call.  This
breaks on x86_64 because %rcx will contain %rip because you tell SYSRET
where to return to by putting the value in %rcx.  So, this corrupts $rcx on
return from the segfault.  To work around this, I added an
arch_finish_segv, which on x86 does nothing, but which on x86_64 ptraces
the child back through the sigreturn.  This causes %rcx to be restored by
sigreturn and avoids the corruption.  Ultimately, I think I will replace
this with the trick of having it send itself a blocked signal which will be
unblocked by the sigreturn.  This will allow it to be stopped just after
the sigreturn, and PTRACE_SYSCALLed without all the back-and-forth of
PTRACE_SYSCALLing it through sigreturn.

This runs on a stock host, so theoretically (and hopefully), tt mode isn't
needed any more.  We need to make sure that this is better in every way
than tt mode, though.  I'm concerned about the speed of address space
updates and page fault handling, since they involve extra round-trips to
the child.  We can amortize the round-trip cost for large address space
updates by writing all of the operations to the data page and having the
child execute them all at the same time.  This will help fork and exec, but
not page faults, since they involve only one page.

I can't think of any way to help page faults, except to add something like
PTRACE_FAULTINFO to the host.  There is PTRACE_SIGINFO, but UML doesn't use
siginfo for SIGSEGV (or anything else) because there isn't enough
information in the siginfo struct to handle page faults (the faulting
operation type is missing).  Adding that would make PTRACE_SIGINFO a usable
equivalent to PTRACE_FAULTINFO.

As for the code itself:

- The system call stub is in arch/um/kernel/sys-$(SUBARCH)/stub.S.  It is
  put in its own section of the binary along with stub_segv_handler in
  arch/um/kernel/skas/process.c.  This is manipulated with run_syscall_stub
  in arch/um/kernel/skas/mem_user.c.  syscall_stub will execute any system
  call at all, but it's only used for mmap, munmap, and mprotect.

- The x86_64 stub calls sigreturn by hand rather than allowing the normal
  sigreturn to happen, because the normal sigreturn is a SA_RESTORER in
  UML's address space provided by libc.  Needless to say, this is not
  available in the child's address space.  Also, it does a couple of odd
  pops before that which restore the stack to the state it was in at the
  time the signal handler was called.

- There is a new field in the arch mmu_context, which is now a union.
  This is the pid to be manipulated rather than the /proc/mm file
  descriptor.  Code which deals with this now checks proc_mm to see whether
  it should use the usual skas code or the new code.

- userspace_tramp is now used to create a new host process for every UML
  process, rather than one per UML processor.  It checks proc_mm and
  ptrace_faultinfo to decide whether to map in the pages above its stack.

- start_userspace now makes CLONE_VM conditional on proc_mm since we need
  separate address spaces now.

- switch_mm_skas now just sets userspace_pid[0] to the new pid rather
  than PTRACE_SWITCH_MM.  There is an addition to userspace which updates
  its idea of the pid being manipulated each time around the loop.  This is
  important on exec, when the pid will change underneath userspace().

- The stub page has a pte, but it can't be mapped in using tlb_flush
  because it is part of tlb_flush.  This is why it's required for it to be
  mapped in by userspace_tramp.

Other random things:

- The stub section in uml.lds.S is page aligned.  This page is written
  out to the backing vm file in setup_physmem because it is mapped from
  there into user processes.

- There's some confusion with TASK_SIZE now that there are a couple of
  extra pages that the process can't use.  TASK_SIZE is considered by the
  elf code to be the usable process memory, which is reasonable, so it is
  decreased by two pages.  This confuses the definition of
  USER_PGDS_IN_LAST_PML4, making it too small because of the rounding down
  of the uneven division.  So we round it to the nearest PGDIR_SIZE rather
  than the lower one.

- I added a missing PT_SYSCALL_ARG6_OFFSET macro.

- um_mmu.h was made into a userspace-usable file.

- proc_mm and ptrace_faultinfo are globals which say whether the host
  supports these features.

- There is a bad interaction between the mm.nr_ptes check at the end of
  exit_mmap, stack randomization, and skas0.  exit_mmap will stop freeing
  pages at the PGDIR_SIZE boundary after the last vma.  If the stack isn't
  on the last page table page, the last pte page won't be freed, as it
  should be since the stub ptes are there, and exit_mmap will BUG because
  there is an unfreed page.  To get around this, TASK_SIZE is set to the
  next lowest PGDIR_SIZE boundary and mm->nr_ptes is decremented after the
  calls to init_stub_pte.  This ensures that we know the process stack (and
  all other process mappings) will be below the top page table page, and
  thus we know that mm->nr_ptes will be one too many, and can be
  decremented.

Things that need fixing:

- We may need better assurrences that the stub code is PIC.

- The stub pte is set up in init_new_context_skas.

- alloc_pgdir is probably the right place.

Signed-off-by: Jeff Dike <jdike@addtoit.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-07-07 18:23:44 -07:00
arch [PATCH] uml: skas0 - separate kernel address space on stock hosts 2005-07-07 18:23:44 -07:00
crypto [CRYPTO] Add faster DES code from Dag Arne Osvik 2005-07-06 13:55:44 -07:00
Documentation [IPV4]: Add LC-Trie implementation notes 2005-07-05 16:38:26 -07:00
drivers [PATCH] pm: fix u32 vs. pm_message_t confusion in cpufreq 2005-07-07 18:23:43 -07:00
fs [PATCH] move ioprio syscalls into syscalls.h 2005-07-07 18:23:37 -07:00
include [PATCH] uml: skas0 - separate kernel address space on stock hosts 2005-07-07 18:23:44 -07:00
init [PATCH] Improper initrd failure message at boot time 2005-06-30 08:45:12 -07:00
ipc [PATCH] ipcsem: remove superflous decrease variable from sys_semtimedop 2005-06-23 09:45:30 -07:00
kernel [PATCH] pm: clean up process.c 2005-07-07 18:23:43 -07:00
lib [PATCH] Use ALIGN to remove duplicate code 2005-06-25 16:25:02 -07:00
mm [PATCH] mm: quieten OOM killer noise 2005-07-07 18:23:36 -07:00
net [TCP]: Never TSO defer under periods of congestion. 2005-07-05 15:43:58 -07:00
scripts [PATCH] openfirmware: generate device table for userspace 2005-07-06 12:55:20 -07:00
security [PATCH] selinux_sb_copy_data() should not require a whole page 2005-06-30 08:45:09 -07:00
sound [PATCH] pm: more u32 vs. pm_message_t fixes 2005-07-07 18:23:43 -07:00
usr Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
COPYING Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
CREDITS [PATCH] Update my credits entry 2005-06-22 10:40:39 -07:00
MAINTAINERS [SPARC]: Fix "Eddie C. Dost" e-mail address 2005-07-06 15:37:58 -07:00
Makefile [PATCH] kbuild: build a single module using 'make dir/module.ko' 2005-07-07 18:23:36 -07:00
README Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
REPORTING-BUGS Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00

	Linux kernel release 2.6.xx

These are the release notes for Linux version 2.6.  Read them carefully,
as they tell you what this is all about, explain how to install the
kernel, and what to do if something goes wrong. 

WHAT IS LINUX?

  Linux is a Unix clone written from scratch by Linus Torvalds with
  assistance from a loosely-knit team of hackers across the Net.
  It aims towards POSIX compliance. 

  It has all the features you would expect in a modern fully-fledged
  Unix, including true multitasking, virtual memory, shared libraries,
  demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables, proper memory
  management and TCP/IP networking. 

  It is distributed under the GNU General Public License - see the
  accompanying COPYING file for more details. 

ON WHAT HARDWARE DOES IT RUN?

  Linux was first developed for 386/486-based PCs.  These days it also
  runs on ARMs, DEC Alphas, SUN Sparcs, M68000 machines (like Atari and
  Amiga), MIPS and PowerPC, and others.

DOCUMENTATION:

 - There is a lot of documentation available both in electronic form on
   the Internet and in books, both Linux-specific and pertaining to
   general UNIX questions.  I'd recommend looking into the documentation
   subdirectories on any Linux FTP site for the LDP (Linux Documentation
   Project) books.  This README is not meant to be documentation on the
   system: there are much better sources available.

 - There are various README files in the Documentation/ subdirectory:
   these typically contain kernel-specific installation notes for some 
   drivers for example. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what
   is contained in each file.  Please read the Changes file, as it
   contains information about the problems, which may result by upgrading
   your kernel.

 - The Documentation/DocBook/ subdirectory contains several guides for
   kernel developers and users.  These guides can be rendered in a
   number of formats:  PostScript (.ps), PDF, and HTML, among others.
   After installation, "make psdocs", "make pdfdocs", or "make htmldocs"
   will render the documentation in the requested format.

INSTALLING the kernel:

 - If you install the full sources, put the kernel tarball in a
   directory where you have permissions (eg. your home directory) and
   unpack it:

		gzip -cd linux-2.6.XX.tar.gz | tar xvf -

   Replace "XX" with the version number of the latest kernel.

   Do NOT use the /usr/src/linux area! This area has a (usually
   incomplete) set of kernel headers that are used by the library header
   files.  They should match the library, and not get messed up by
   whatever the kernel-du-jour happens to be.

 - You can also upgrade between 2.6.xx releases by patching.  Patches are
   distributed in the traditional gzip and the new bzip2 format.  To
   install by patching, get all the newer patch files, enter the
   top level directory of the kernel source (linux-2.6.xx) and execute:

		gzip -cd ../patch-2.6.xx.gz | patch -p1

   or
		bzip2 -dc ../patch-2.6.xx.bz2 | patch -p1

   (repeat xx for all versions bigger than the version of your current
   source tree, _in_order_) and you should be ok.  You may want to remove
   the backup files (xxx~ or xxx.orig), and make sure that there are no
   failed patches (xxx# or xxx.rej). If there are, either you or me has
   made a mistake.

   Alternatively, the script patch-kernel can be used to automate this
   process.  It determines the current kernel version and applies any
   patches found.

		linux/scripts/patch-kernel linux

   The first argument in the command above is the location of the
   kernel source.  Patches are applied from the current directory, but
   an alternative directory can be specified as the second argument.

 - Make sure you have no stale .o files and dependencies lying around:

		cd linux
		make mrproper

   You should now have the sources correctly installed.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

   Compiling and running the 2.6.xx kernels requires up-to-date
   versions of various software packages.  Consult
   Documentation/Changes for the minimum version numbers required
   and how to get updates for these packages.  Beware that using
   excessively old versions of these packages can cause indirect
   errors that are very difficult to track down, so don't assume that
   you can just update packages when obvious problems arise during
   build or operation.

BUILD directory for the kernel:

   When compiling the kernel all output files will per default be
   stored together with the kernel source code.
   Using the option "make O=output/dir" allow you to specify an alternate
   place for the output files (including .config).
   Example:
     kernel source code:	/usr/src/linux-2.6.N
     build directory:		/home/name/build/kernel

   To configure and build the kernel use:
   cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.N
   make O=/home/name/build/kernel menuconfig
   make O=/home/name/build/kernel
   sudo make O=/home/name/build/kernel modules_install install

   Please note: If the 'O=output/dir' option is used then it must be
   used for all invocations of make.

CONFIGURING the kernel:

   Do not skip this step even if you are only upgrading one minor
   version.  New configuration options are added in each release, and
   odd problems will turn up if the configuration files are not set up
   as expected.  If you want to carry your existing configuration to a
   new version with minimal work, use "make oldconfig", which will
   only ask you for the answers to new questions.

 - Alternate configuration commands are:
	"make menuconfig"  Text based color menus, radiolists & dialogs.
	"make xconfig"     X windows (Qt) based configuration tool.
	"make gconfig"     X windows (Gtk) based configuration tool.
	"make oldconfig"   Default all questions based on the contents of
			   your existing ./.config file.
   
	NOTES on "make config":
	- having unnecessary drivers will make the kernel bigger, and can
	  under some circumstances lead to problems: probing for a
	  nonexistent controller card may confuse your other controllers
	- compiling the kernel with "Processor type" set higher than 386
	  will result in a kernel that does NOT work on a 386.  The
	  kernel will detect this on bootup, and give up.
	- A kernel with math-emulation compiled in will still use the
	  coprocessor if one is present: the math emulation will just
	  never get used in that case.  The kernel will be slightly larger,
	  but will work on different machines regardless of whether they
	  have a math coprocessor or not. 
	- the "kernel hacking" configuration details usually result in a
	  bigger or slower kernel (or both), and can even make the kernel
	  less stable by configuring some routines to actively try to
	  break bad code to find kernel problems (kmalloc()).  Thus you
	  should probably answer 'n' to the questions for
          "development", "experimental", or "debugging" features.

 - Check the top Makefile for further site-dependent configuration
   (default SVGA mode etc). 

COMPILING the kernel:

 - Make sure you have gcc 2.95.3 available.
   gcc 2.91.66 (egcs-1.1.2), and gcc 2.7.2.3 are known to miscompile
   some parts of the kernel, and are *no longer supported*.
   Also remember to upgrade your binutils package (for as/ld/nm and company)
   if necessary. For more information, refer to Documentation/Changes.

   Please note that you can still run a.out user programs with this kernel.

 - Do a "make" to create a compressed kernel image. It is also
   possible to do "make install" if you have lilo installed to suit the
   kernel makefiles, but you may want to check your particular lilo setup first.

   To do the actual install you have to be root, but none of the normal
   build should require that. Don't take the name of root in vain.

 - If you configured any of the parts of the kernel as `modules', you
   will also have to do "make modules_install".

 - Keep a backup kernel handy in case something goes wrong.  This is 
   especially true for the development releases, since each new release
   contains new code which has not been debugged.  Make sure you keep a
   backup of the modules corresponding to that kernel, as well.  If you
   are installing a new kernel with the same version number as your
   working kernel, make a backup of your modules directory before you
   do a "make modules_install".

 - In order to boot your new kernel, you'll need to copy the kernel
   image (e.g. .../linux/arch/i386/boot/bzImage after compilation)
   to the place where your regular bootable kernel is found. 

 - Booting a kernel directly from a floppy without the assistance of a
   bootloader such as LILO, is no longer supported.

   If you boot Linux from the hard drive, chances are you use LILO which
   uses the kernel image as specified in the file /etc/lilo.conf.  The
   kernel image file is usually /vmlinuz, /boot/vmlinuz, /bzImage or
   /boot/bzImage.  To use the new kernel, save a copy of the old image
   and copy the new image over the old one.  Then, you MUST RERUN LILO
   to update the loading map!! If you don't, you won't be able to boot
   the new kernel image.

   Reinstalling LILO is usually a matter of running /sbin/lilo. 
   You may wish to edit /etc/lilo.conf to specify an entry for your
   old kernel image (say, /vmlinux.old) in case the new one does not
   work.  See the LILO docs for more information. 

   After reinstalling LILO, you should be all set.  Shutdown the system,
   reboot, and enjoy!

   If you ever need to change the default root device, video mode,
   ramdisk size, etc.  in the kernel image, use the 'rdev' program (or
   alternatively the LILO boot options when appropriate).  No need to
   recompile the kernel to change these parameters. 

 - Reboot with the new kernel and enjoy. 

IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG:

 - If you have problems that seem to be due to kernel bugs, please check
   the file MAINTAINERS to see if there is a particular person associated
   with the part of the kernel that you are having trouble with. If there
   isn't anyone listed there, then the second best thing is to mail
   them to me (torvalds@osdl.org), and possibly to any other relevant
   mailing-list or to the newsgroup.

 - In all bug-reports, *please* tell what kernel you are talking about,
   how to duplicate the problem, and what your setup is (use your common
   sense).  If the problem is new, tell me so, and if the problem is
   old, please try to tell me when you first noticed it.

 - If the bug results in a message like

	unable to handle kernel paging request at address C0000010
	Oops: 0002
	EIP:   0010:XXXXXXXX
	eax: xxxxxxxx   ebx: xxxxxxxx   ecx: xxxxxxxx   edx: xxxxxxxx
	esi: xxxxxxxx   edi: xxxxxxxx   ebp: xxxxxxxx
	ds: xxxx  es: xxxx  fs: xxxx  gs: xxxx
	Pid: xx, process nr: xx
	xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx xx

   or similar kernel debugging information on your screen or in your
   system log, please duplicate it *exactly*.  The dump may look
   incomprehensible to you, but it does contain information that may
   help debugging the problem.  The text above the dump is also
   important: it tells something about why the kernel dumped code (in
   the above example it's due to a bad kernel pointer). More information
   on making sense of the dump is in Documentation/oops-tracing.txt

 - If you compiled the kernel with CONFIG_KALLSYMS you can send the dump
   as is, otherwise you will have to use the "ksymoops" program to make
   sense of the dump.  This utility can be downloaded from
   ftp://ftp.<country>.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/ksymoops.
   Alternately you can do the dump lookup by hand:

 - In debugging dumps like the above, it helps enormously if you can
   look up what the EIP value means.  The hex value as such doesn't help
   me or anybody else very much: it will depend on your particular
   kernel setup.  What you should do is take the hex value from the EIP
   line (ignore the "0010:"), and look it up in the kernel namelist to
   see which kernel function contains the offending address.

   To find out the kernel function name, you'll need to find the system
   binary associated with the kernel that exhibited the symptom.  This is
   the file 'linux/vmlinux'.  To extract the namelist and match it against
   the EIP from the kernel crash, do:

		nm vmlinux | sort | less

   This will give you a list of kernel addresses sorted in ascending
   order, from which it is simple to find the function that contains the
   offending address.  Note that the address given by the kernel
   debugging messages will not necessarily match exactly with the
   function addresses (in fact, that is very unlikely), so you can't
   just 'grep' the list: the list will, however, give you the starting
   point of each kernel function, so by looking for the function that
   has a starting address lower than the one you are searching for but
   is followed by a function with a higher address you will find the one
   you want.  In fact, it may be a good idea to include a bit of
   "context" in your problem report, giving a few lines around the
   interesting one. 

   If you for some reason cannot do the above (you have a pre-compiled
   kernel image or similar), telling me as much about your setup as
   possible will help. 

 - Alternately, you can use gdb on a running kernel. (read-only; i.e. you
   cannot change values or set break points.) To do this, first compile the
   kernel with -g; edit arch/i386/Makefile appropriately, then do a "make
   clean". You'll also need to enable CONFIG_PROC_FS (via "make config").

   After you've rebooted with the new kernel, do "gdb vmlinux /proc/kcore".
   You can now use all the usual gdb commands. The command to look up the
   point where your system crashed is "l *0xXXXXXXXX". (Replace the XXXes
   with the EIP value.)

   gdb'ing a non-running kernel currently fails because gdb (wrongly)
   disregards the starting offset for which the kernel is compiled.