Re: [PATCH v3 2/6] x86/uaccess: Avoid barrier_nospec() in 64-bit __get_user()
From: 'Josh Poimboeuf' <jpoimboe@kernel.org>
Date: 2024-11-15 23:06:56
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On Fri, Nov 08, 2024 at 05:12:53PM +0000, David Laight wrote:
From: Josh Poimboeufquoted
On Mon, Oct 28, 2024 at 06:56:15PM -0700, Josh Poimboeuf wrote:quoted
The barrier_nospec() in 64-bit __get_user() is slow. Instead use pointer masking to force the user pointer to all 1's if a previous access_ok() mispredicted true for an invalid address.Linus pointed out that __get_user() may be used by some code to access both kernel and user space and in fact I found one such usage in vc_read_mem()....
.. which sucks because I got a "will-it-scale.per_process_ops 1.9% improvement" report for this patch. It's sad that __get_user() is now slower than get_user() on x86, it kind of defeats the whole point! I know at least the "coco" code is misusing __get_user(). Unless somebody wants to audit all the other callers, we could do something horrific: .macro __get_user_nocheck_nospec #ifdef CONFIG_X86_64 movq $0x0123456789abcdef, %rdx 1: .pushsection runtime_ptr_USER_PTR_MAX, "a" .long 1b - 8 - . .popsection cmp %rax, %rdx jb 10f sbb %rdx, %rdx or %rdx, %rax jmp 11f 10: /* * Stop access_ok() branch misprediction -- both of them ;-) * * As a benefit this also punishes callers who intentionally call this * with a kernel address. Once they're rooted out, __get_user() can * just become an alias of get_user(). * * TODO: Add WARN_ON() */ #endif ASM_BARRIER_NOSPEC 11: .endm /* .. and the same for __get_user, just without the range checks */ SYM_FUNC_START(__get_user_nocheck_1) __get_user_nocheck_nospec ASM_STAC UACCESS movzbl (%_ASM_AX),%edx xor %eax,%eax ASM_CLAC RET SYM_FUNC_END(__get_user_nocheck_1) EXPORT_SYMBOL(__get_user_nocheck_1) Yes, I know adding another access_ok() is bad, but it would be a definite speedup. And adding a WARN_ON() would root out any other bad callers pretty quick.
But I've wondered if access_ok() ought to be implemented using an 'asm goto with output' - much like get_user(). Then the use would be: masked_address = access_ok(maybe_bad_address, size, jump_label); with later user accesses using the masked_address. Once you've done that __get_user() doesn't need to contain address masking.
Sure, we just need a volunteer to change all the access_ok() implementations and callers tree-wide ;-)
Given that clac/stac iare so slow should there are be something that combines stac with access_ok() bracketed with a 'user_access_end' or an actual fault. I've sure there is code (maybe reading iovec[] or in sys_poll()) that wants to do multiple get/put_user in a short loop rather that calling copy_to/from_user().
We already have this with user_access_begin() + unsafe_get_user(). There's also a version which masks the address: masked_user_access_begin(). We just need to start porting things over. -- Josh