Re: [PATCH v1 1/1] tools/nolibc: i386: Fix a stack misalign bug on _start

From: Zhangjin Wu
Date: Sat Aug 26 2023 - 11:08:46 EST


Hi, Ammar, Hi, Nicholas

Thanks very much for your report and fixup, sorry for the missing alignment for
the new single one push instruction.

> The ABI mandates that the %esp register must be a multiple of 16 when
> executing a call instruction.
>
> Commit 2ab446336b17 simplified the _start function, but it didn't take
> care of the %esp alignment, causing SIGSEGV on SSE and AVX programs that
> use aligned move instruction (e.g., movdqa, movaps, and vmovdqa).
>
> Ensure the %esp is a multiple of 16 when executing the call instruction.
>
> Cc: Zhangjin Wu <falcon@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> Fixes: 2ab446336b17aad362c6decee29b4efd83a01979 ("tools/nolibc: i386: shrink _start with _start_c")
> Reported-by: Nicholas Rosenberg <inori@xxxxxxxx>
> Signed-off-by: Ammar Faizi <ammarfaizi2@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> tools/include/nolibc/arch-i386.h | 3 ++-
> 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)
>
> diff --git a/tools/include/nolibc/arch-i386.h b/tools/include/nolibc/arch-i386.h
> index 64415b9fac77f996..4edf238eeac67aa2 100644
> --- a/tools/include/nolibc/arch-i386.h
> +++ b/tools/include/nolibc/arch-i386.h
> @@ -167,7 +167,8 @@ void __attribute__((weak, noreturn, optimize("Os", "omit-frame-pointer"))) __no_
> __asm__ volatile (
> "xor %ebp, %ebp\n" /* zero the stack frame */
> "mov %esp, %eax\n" /* save stack pointer to %eax, as arg1 of _start_c */
> - "and $-16, %esp\n" /* last pushed argument must be 16-byte aligned */
> + "and $-16, %esp\n" /* align stack to 16 bytes */
> + "sub $12, %esp\n" /* last pushed argument must be 16-byte aligned */

Ammar, the new call of _start_c() only requires a single push, it pushes
the argument and minus %esp by 4, so, the alignment of %esp requires to
minus 12 to reserve 16-byte alignment, is this description right?

If so, What about further?

"and $-16, %esp\n" /* align stack to 16 bytes */
"sub ($16 - $4), %esp" /* the 'push %eax' breaks stack alignment, fix up it */

Thanks,
Zhangjin Wu

> "push %eax\n" /* push arg1 on stack to support plain stack modes too */
> "call _start_c\n" /* transfer to c runtime */
> "hlt\n" /* ensure it does not return */
> --
> Ammar Faizi