Thread (7 messages) 7 messages, 3 authors, 2026-03-25

Re: [RFC PATCH] iov: Bypass usercopy hardening for kernel iterators

From: "Chuck Lever" <cel@kernel.org>
Date: 2026-03-25 17:26:43
Also in: linux-block, linux-fsdevel, linux-hardening


On Tue, Mar 3, 2026, at 11:29 AM, Chuck Lever wrote:
quoted hunk ↗ jump to hunk
From: Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>

Profiling NFSD under an iozone workload showed that hardened
usercopy checks consume roughly 1.3% of CPU in the TCP receive
path. The runtime check in check_object_size() validates that
copy buffers reside in expected slab regions, which is
meaningful when data crosses the user/kernel boundary but adds
no value when both source and destination are kernel addresses.

Split check_copy_size() so that copy_to_iter() can bypass the
runtime check_object_size() call for kernel-only iterators
(ITER_BVEC, ITER_KVEC). Existing callers of check_copy_size()
are unaffected; user-backed iterators still receive the full
usercopy validation.

This benefits all kernel consumers of copy_to_iter(), including
the TCP receive path used by the NFS client and server,
NVMe-TCP, and any other subsystem that uses ITER_BVEC or
ITER_KVEC receive buffers.

Signed-off-by: Chuck Lever <chuck.lever@oracle.com>
---
 include/linux/ucopysize.h | 10 +++++++++-
 include/linux/uio.h       |  9 +++++++--
 2 files changed, 16 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
diff --git a/include/linux/ucopysize.h b/include/linux/ucopysize.h
index 41c2d9720466..b3eacb4869a8 100644
--- a/include/linux/ucopysize.h
+++ b/include/linux/ucopysize.h
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ static inline void copy_overflow(int size, unsigned 
long count)
 }

 static __always_inline __must_check bool
-check_copy_size(const void *addr, size_t bytes, bool is_source)
+check_copy_size_nosec(const void *addr, size_t bytes, bool is_source)
 {
 	int sz = __builtin_object_size(addr, 0);
 	if (unlikely(sz >= 0 && sz < bytes)) {
@@ -56,6 +56,14 @@ check_copy_size(const void *addr, size_t bytes, bool 
is_source)
 	}
 	if (WARN_ON_ONCE(bytes > INT_MAX))
 		return false;
+	return true;
+}
+
+static __always_inline __must_check bool
+check_copy_size(const void *addr, size_t bytes, bool is_source)
+{
+	if (!check_copy_size_nosec(addr, bytes, is_source))
+		return false;
 	check_object_size(addr, bytes, is_source);
 	return true;
 }
diff --git a/include/linux/uio.h b/include/linux/uio.h
index a9bc5b3067e3..f860529abfbe 100644
--- a/include/linux/uio.h
+++ b/include/linux/uio.h
@@ -216,8 +216,13 @@ size_t copy_page_to_iter_nofault(struct page 
*page, unsigned offset,
 static __always_inline __must_check
 size_t copy_to_iter(const void *addr, size_t bytes, struct iov_iter *i)
 {
-	if (check_copy_size(addr, bytes, true))
-		return _copy_to_iter(addr, bytes, i);
+	if (user_backed_iter(i)) {
+		if (check_copy_size(addr, bytes, true))
+			return _copy_to_iter(addr, bytes, i);
+	} else {
+		if (check_copy_size_nosec(addr, bytes, true))
+			return _copy_to_iter(addr, bytes, i);
+	}
 	return 0;
 }

-- 
2.53.0
Ping: Any further thoughts on this? Al, Kees, Gustavo?


-- 
Chuck Lever
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