RE: [PATCH v7 04/21] x86/split_lock: Align x86_capability to unsigned long to avoid split locked access

[David Laight]

From: Thomas Gleixner
> Sent: 18 April 2019 12:49
> On Thu, 18 Apr 2019, David Laight wrote:
> > From: David Laight
> > > Sent: 18 April 2019 10:21
> > > From: Fenghua Yu
> > > > Sent: 17 April 2019 22:34
> > > >
> > > > set_cpu_cap() calls locked BTS and clear_cpu_cap() calls locked BTR to
> > > > operate on bitmap defined in x86_capability.
> > > >
> > > > Locked BTS/BTR accesses a single unsigned long location. In 64-bit mode,
> > > > the location is at:
> > > > base address of x86_capability + (bit offset in x86_capability / 64) * 8
> > > >
> > > > Since base address of x86_capability may not be aligned to unsigned long,
> > > > the single unsigned long location may cross two cache lines and
> > > > accessing the location by locked BTS/BTR introductions will cause
> > > > split lock.
> > >
> > > Isn't the problem that the type (and definition) of x86_capability[] are wrong.
> > > If the 'bitmap' functions are used for it, it should be defined as a bitmap.
> > > This would make it 'unsigned long' not __u32.
> > >
> > > This type munging of bitmaps only works on LE systems.
> > >
> > > OTOH the locked BTS/BTR instructions could be changed to use 32 bit accesses.
> > > ISTR some of the associated functions use byte accesses.
> > >
> > > Perhaps there ought to be asm wrappers for BTS/BTR that do 8bit and
> > > 32bit accesses.
> >
> > A quick look shows that this isn't the only __32[] that is being
> > cast to (unsigned long) and then to set/test/clear_bit() in those
> > files.
> >
> > I wonder how much other code is applying such casts?
> 
> The reason for the cpuid stuff using u32 is that this is actually the width
> of the information retrieved from CPUID.

Right, but you shouldn't (as has been found out) cast pointers
to integer types.

Running
grep -r --include '*.[ch]' '_bit([^(]*, *([^)]* ' .
over the entire kernel source tree shows quite a few 'dubious' casts.

They'll be doubly dubious on BE systems.

	David

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