Re: [PATCH 2/2] acpi, apei: use appropriate pgprot_t to map GHES memory

From: Matt Fleming
Date: Fri Sep 04 2015 - 07:28:29 EST


On Tue, 25 Aug, at 10:27:22AM, Jonathan (Zhixiong) Zhang wrote:
> From: "Jonathan (Zhixiong) Zhang" <zjzhang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> If the ACPI APEI firmware handles hardware error first (called "firmware
> first handling"), the firmware updates the GHES memory region with hardware
> error record (called "generic hardware error record"). Essentially the
> firmware writes hardware error records in the GHES memory region, triggers
> an NMI/interrupt, then the GHES driver goes off and grabs the error record
> from the GHES region.
>
> The kernel currently maps the GHES memory region as cacheable
> (PAGE_KERNEL) for all architectures. However, on some arm64 platforms,
> there is a mismatch between how the kernel maps the GHES region
> (PAGE_KERNEL) and how the firmware maps it (EFI_MEMORY_UC, ie.
> uncacheable), leading to the possibility of the kernel GHES driver
> reading stale data from the cache when it receives the interrupt.
>
> With stale data being read, the kernel is unaware there is new hardware
> error to be handled when there actually is; this may lead to further damage
> in various scenarios, such as error propagation caused data corruption.
> If uncorrected error (such as double bit ECC error) happened in memory
> operation and if the kernel is unaware of such event happening, errorneous
> data may be propagated to the disk.
>
> Instead GHES memory region should be mapped with page protection type
> according to what is returned from arch_apei_get_mem_attribute().
>
> Reviewed-by: Matt Fleming <matt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Acked-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Jonathan (Zhixiong) Zhang <zjzhang@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> drivers/acpi/apei/ghes.c | 10 +++++++---
> 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

This patch message looks fine to me. Ingo?

--
Matt Fleming, Intel Open Source Technology Center
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