[PATCH v4] powerpc: Avoid code patching freed init sections

Nicholas Piggin npiggin at gmail.com
Fri Sep 14 14:22:01 AEST 2018


On Fri, 14 Sep 2018 11:14:11 +1000
Michael Neuling <mikey at neuling.org> wrote:

> This stops us from doing code patching in init sections after they've
> been freed.
> 
> In this chain:
>   kvm_guest_init() ->
>     kvm_use_magic_page() ->
>       fault_in_pages_readable() ->
> 	 __get_user() ->
> 	   __get_user_nocheck() ->
> 	     barrier_nospec();
> 
> We have a code patching location at barrier_nospec() and
> kvm_guest_init() is an init function. This whole chain gets inlined,
> so when we free the init section (hence kvm_guest_init()), this code
> goes away and hence should no longer be patched.
> 
> We seen this as userspace memory corruption when using a memory
> checker while doing partition migration testing on powervm (this
> starts the code patching post migration via
> /sys/kernel/mobility/migration). In theory, it could also happen when
> using /sys/kernel/debug/powerpc/barrier_nospec.
> 
> cc: stable at vger.kernel.org # 4.13+
> Signed-off-by: Michael Neuling <mikey at neuling.org>
> 
> ---
> For stable I've marked this as v4.13+ since that's when we refactored
> code-patching.c but it could go back even further than that. In
> reality though, I think we can only hit this since the first
> spectre/meltdown changes.
> 
> v4:
>  Feedback from Christophe Leroy:
>    - init_mem_free -> init_mem_is_free
>    - prlog %lx -> %px
> 
> v3:
>  Add init_mem_free flag to avoid potential race.
>  Feedback from Christophe Leroy:
>    - use init_section_contains()
>    - change order of init test for performance
>    - use pr_debug()
>    - remove blank line
> 
> v2:
>   Print when we skip an address
> ---
>  arch/powerpc/include/asm/setup.h | 1 +
>  arch/powerpc/lib/code-patching.c | 6 ++++++
>  arch/powerpc/mm/mem.c            | 2 ++
>  3 files changed, 9 insertions(+)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/powerpc/include/asm/setup.h b/arch/powerpc/include/asm/setup.h
> index 1a951b0046..1fffbba8d6 100644
> --- a/arch/powerpc/include/asm/setup.h
> +++ b/arch/powerpc/include/asm/setup.h
> @@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ extern void ppc_printk_progress(char *s, unsigned short hex);
>  
>  extern unsigned int rtas_data;
>  extern unsigned long long memory_limit;
> +extern bool init_mem_is_free;
>  extern unsigned long klimit;
>  extern void *zalloc_maybe_bootmem(size_t size, gfp_t mask);
>  
> diff --git a/arch/powerpc/lib/code-patching.c b/arch/powerpc/lib/code-patching.c
> index 850f3b8f4d..6ae2777c22 100644
> --- a/arch/powerpc/lib/code-patching.c
> +++ b/arch/powerpc/lib/code-patching.c
> @@ -28,6 +28,12 @@ static int __patch_instruction(unsigned int *exec_addr, unsigned int instr,
>  {
>  	int err;
>  
> +	/* Make sure we aren't patching a freed init section */
> +	if (init_mem_is_free && init_section_contains(exec_addr, 4)) {
> +		pr_debug("Skipping init section patching addr: 0x%px\n", exec_addr);
> +		return 0;
> +	}

What we should do is a whitelist, make sure it's only patching the
sections we want it to.

That's a bigger job when you consider modules and things too though,
so this looks good for now. Thanks,

Reviewed-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin at gmail.com>


More information about the Linuxppc-dev mailing list