Thread (16 messages) 16 messages, 5 authors, 2019-08-23

Re: [PATCH v8 4/5] arm64: Define Documentation/arm64/tagged-address-abi.rst

From: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>
Date: 2019-08-19 16:25:57
Also in: linux-arch, linux-doc, linux-mm

On Thu, Aug 15, 2019 at 04:44:02PM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
From: Vincenzo Frascino <vincenzo.frascino@arm.com>

On AArch64 the TCR_EL1.TBI0 bit is set by default, allowing userspace
(EL0) to perform memory accesses through 64-bit pointers with a non-zero
top byte. Introduce the document describing the relaxation of the
syscall ABI that allows userspace to pass certain tagged pointers to
kernel syscalls.

Cc: Will Deacon <redacted>
Cc: Andrey Konovalov <redacted>
Cc: Szabolcs Nagy <redacted>
Cc: Kevin Brodsky <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Vincenzo Frascino <vincenzo.frascino@arm.com>
Co-developed-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
---
 Documentation/arm64/tagged-address-abi.rst | 155 +++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 155 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/arm64/tagged-address-abi.rst
diff --git a/Documentation/arm64/tagged-address-abi.rst b/Documentation/arm64/tagged-address-abi.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..8808337775d6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/arm64/tagged-address-abi.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,155 @@
+==========================
+AArch64 TAGGED ADDRESS ABI
+==========================
+
+Authors: Vincenzo Frascino <vincenzo.frascino@arm.com>
+         Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
+
+Date: 15 August 2019
+
+This document describes the usage and semantics of the Tagged Address
+ABI on AArch64 Linux.
+
+1. Introduction
+---------------
+
+On AArch64 the TCR_EL1.TBI0 bit is set by default, allowing userspace
+(EL0) to perform memory accesses through 64-bit pointers with a non-zero
+top byte. This document describes the relaxation of the syscall ABI that
+allows userspace to pass certain tagged pointers to kernel syscalls.
+
+2. AArch64 Tagged Address ABI
+-----------------------------
+
+From the kernel syscall interface perspective and for the purposes of
+this document, a "valid tagged pointer" is a pointer with a potentially
+non-zero top-byte that references an address in the user process address
+space obtained in one of the following ways:
+
+- mmap() done by the process itself (or its parent), where either:
+
+  - flags have the **MAP_ANONYMOUS** bit set
+  - the file descriptor refers to a regular file (including those
+    returned by memfd_create()) or **/dev/zero**
nit: but the markup is pretty inconsistent throughout. Why is /dev/zero
bold, but not memfd_create()? I think they would both be better off in
typewriter font, if that's a thing in rst.
+- brk() system call done by the process itself (i.e. the heap area
+  between the initial location of the program break at process creation
+  and its current location).
+
+- any memory mapped by the kernel in the address space of the process
+  during creation and with the same restrictions as for mmap() above
+  (e.g. data, bss, stack).
+
+The AArch64 Tagged Address ABI has two stages of relaxation depending
+how the user addresses are used by the kernel:
+
+1. User addresses not accessed by the kernel but used for address space
+   management (e.g. mmap(), mprotect(), madvise()). The use of valid
+   tagged pointers in this context is always allowed.
+
+2. User addresses accessed by the kernel (e.g. write()). This ABI
+   relaxation is disabled by default and the application thread needs to
+   explicitly enable it via **prctl()** as follows:
+
+   - **PR_SET_TAGGED_ADDR_CTRL**: enable or disable the AArch64 Tagged
+     Address ABI for the calling thread.
+
+     The (unsigned int) arg2 argument is a bit mask describing the
+     control mode used:
+
+     - **PR_TAGGED_ADDR_ENABLE**: enable AArch64 Tagged Address ABI.
+       Default status is disabled.
+
+     Arguments arg3, arg4, and arg5 must be 0.
+
+   - **PR_GET_TAGGED_ADDR_CTRL**: get the status of the AArch64 Tagged
+     Address ABI for the calling thread.
+
+     Arguments arg2, arg3, arg4, and arg5 must be 0.
+
+   The ABI properties described above are thread-scoped, inherited on
+   clone() and fork() and cleared on exec().
+
+   Calling prctl(PR_SET_TAGGED_ADDR_CTRL, PR_TAGGED_ADDR_ENABLE, 0, 0, 0)
+   returns -EINVAL if the AArch64 Tagged Address ABI is globally disabled
+   by sysctl abi.tagged_addr_disabled=1. The default sysctl
+   abi.tagged_addr_disabled configuration is 0.
+
+When the AArch64 Tagged Address ABI is enabled for a thread, the
+following behaviours are guaranteed:
+
+- All syscalls except the cases mentioned in section 3 can accept any
+  valid tagged pointer.
+
+- The syscall behaviour is undefined for invalid tagged pointers: it may
+  result in an error code being returned, a (fatal) signal being raised,
+  or other modes of failure.
+
+- A valid tagged pointer has the same semantics as the corresponding
+  untagged pointer.
nit, but I'd reword this last bullet slightly to say:

  - The syscall behaviour for a valid tagged pointer is the same as for
    the corresponding untagged pointer.

Since that flows better wrt the previous bullet and is explicit about
syscall behaviour, rather than overall semantics.
+
+A definition of the meaning of tagged pointers on AArch64 can be found
+in Documentation/arm64/tagged-pointers.rst.
+
+3. AArch64 Tagged Address ABI Exceptions
+-----------------------------------------
+
+The following system call parameters must be untagged regardless of the
+ABI relaxation:
+
+- prctl() other than arguments pointing to user structures to be
+  accessed by the kernel.
+
+- ioctl() other than arguments pointing to user structures to be
+  accessed by the kernel.
I agree with Kevin that we should tighten this up. How about:

  - ... other than pointers to user data either passed directly or
    indirectly as arguments to be accessed by the kernel.

?

Will

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