Re: [PATCH] x86: efi: avoid BUILD_BUG_ON() for non-constant p4d_index

From: Arvind Sankar
Date: Fri Jan 15 2021 - 15:13:28 EST


On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 08:54:18PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 8:18 PM Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 15, 2021 at 02:11:25PM -0500, Arvind Sankar wrote:
> > > That's how build-time assertions work: they are _supposed_ to be
> > > optimized away completely when the assertion is true. If they're
> > > _not_ optimized away, the build will fail.
> >
> > Yah, that I know, thanks.
> >
> > If gcc really inlines p4d_index() and does a lot more aggressive
> > optimization to determine that the condition is false and thus optimize
> > everything away (and clang doesn't), then that would explain the
> > observation.
>
> One difference is that gcc does not have
> -fsanitize=unsigned-integer-overflow at all, and I don't see the
> assertion without that on clang either, so it's possible that clang
> behaves as designed here.
>
> The description is:
> -fsanitize=unsigned-integer-overflow: Unsigned integer overflow, where
> the result of an unsigned integer computation cannot be represented in
> its type. Unlike signed integer overflow, this is not undefined behavior,
> but it is often unintentional. This sanitizer does not check for
> lossy implicit
> conversions performed before such a computation (see
> -fsanitize=implicit-conversion).
>
> The "-68 * ((1UL) << 30" computation does overflow an unsigned long
> as intended, right? Maybe this is enough for the ubsan code in clang to
> just disable some of the optimization steps that the assertion relies on.
>
> Arnd

That does seem to be an overflow, but that happens at compile-time.
Maybe
AC(-68, UL) << 30
would be a better definition to avoid overflow.

The real issue might be (ptrs_per_p4d - 1) which can overflow at
run-time, and maybe the added ubsan code makes p4d_index() not worth
inlining according to clang?