Re: [PATCH v5 2/5] powerpc/kprobes: Mark newly allocated probes as RO

Russell Currey [off-list ref] writes:

With CONFIG_STRICT_KERNEL_RWX=y and CONFIG_KPROBES=y, there will be one
W+X page at boot by default.  This can be tested with
CONFIG_PPC_PTDUMP=y and CONFIG_PPC_DEBUG_WX=y set, and checking the
kernel log during boot.

powerpc doesn't implement its own alloc() for kprobes like other
architectures do, but we couldn't immediately mark RO anyway since we do
a memcpy to the page we allocate later.  After that, nothing should be
allowed to modify the page, and write permissions are removed well
before the kprobe is armed.

Thus mark newly allocated probes as read-only once it's safe to do so.

So if I've got the flow right here:

register[_aggr]_kprobe
 -> prepare_kprobe
  -> arch_prepare_kprobe
       perform memcpy
       mark as readonly, after which no-one touches writes to the memory

which all seems right to me.

I have been trying to check if optprobes need special handling: it looks
like the buffer for them lives in kernel text, not dynamically allocated
memory, so it should be protected by the usual Strict RWX protections
without special treatment here.

So lgtm.

Reviewed-by: Daniel Axtens <redacted>

Regards,
Daniel