Re: RFC: userspace exception fixups

From: Sean Christopherson
Date: Tue Nov 20 2018 - 13:09:48 EST


On Tue, Nov 20, 2018 at 12:11:33PM +0200, Jarkko Sakkinen wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 09:00:08AM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 8:02 AM Jarkko Sakkinen
> > <jarkko.sakkinen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Mon, Nov 19, 2018 at 07:29:36AM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > > > 1. The kernel needs some way to know *when* to apply this fixup.
> > > > Decoding the instruction stream and doing it to all exceptions that
> > > > hit an ENCLU instruction seems like a poor design.
> > >
> > > I'm not sure why you would ever need to do any type of fixup as the idea
> > > is to just return to AEP i.e. from chosen exceptions (EPCM, #UD) the AEP
> > > would work the same way as for exceptions that the kernel can deal with
> > > except filling the exception information to registers.
> >
> > Sure, but how does the kernel know when to do that and when to send a
> > signal? I don't really like decoding the instruction stream to figure
> > it out.
>
> Hmm... why you have to decode instruction stream to find that out? Would
> just depend on exception type (#GP with EPCM, #UD).

#PF w/ PFEC_SGX is the only exception that indicates a fault is related
to SGX. Theoretically we could avoid decoding by using a magic value
for the AEP itself and doing even more magic fixup, but that wouldn't
help for faults that occur on EENTER, which can be generic #GPs due to
loss of EPC on SGX1 systems.

> Or are you saying
> that kernel should need to SIGSEGV if there is in fact ENCLU so that
> there is no infinite trap loop? Sorry, I'm a bit lost here that where
> does this decoding requirement comes from in the first place. I
> understand how it is used in Sean's proposal...
>
> Anyway, this option can be probably discarded without further
> consideration because apparently single stepping can cause #DB SS fault
> if AEP handler is anything else than a single instruction.

Not that it matters, but we could satisfy the "one instruction"
requirement if the fixup changed RIP to point at an ENCLU for #DBs.

> For me it seems that by ruling out options, vDSO option is what is
> left. I don't like it but at least it works...
>
> /Jarkko