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Subject: Re: [PATCH] linux-2.5.43_vsyscall_A0
From: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
To: Andrea Arcangeli <andrea@suse.de>
Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de>, Jeff Dike <jdike@karaya.com>,
       john stultz <johnstul@us.ibm.com>,
       Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>,
       lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       george anzinger <george@mvista.com>
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Would it be possible to allow UML to use mmap to put an alternative text
page at the fixed address with the UML appropriate version of the
vsyscall?

On Fri, 2002-10-18 at 22:01, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 06:45:56AM +0200, Andi Kleen wrote:
> > On Sat, Oct 19, 2002 at 06:10:19AM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> > > On Fri, Oct 18, 2002 at 11:49:59PM -0500, Jeff Dike wrote:
> > > > ak@muc.de said:
> > > > > Guess you'll have some problems then with UML on x86-64, which always
> > > > > uses vgettimeofday. But it's only used for gettimeofday() currently,
> > > > > perhaps it's  not that bad when the UML child runs with the host's
> > > > > time.
> > > > 
> > > > It's not horrible, but it's still broken.  There are people who depend
> > > > on UML being able to keep its own time separately from the host.
> > > > 
> > > > > I guess it would be possible to add some support for UML to map own
> > > > > code over the vsyscall reserved locations. UML would need to use the
> > > > > syscalls then. But it'll be likely ugly. 
> > > > 
> > > > Yeah, it would be.
> > > > 
> > > > My preferred solution would be for libc to ask the kernel where the vsyscall
> > > > area is.  That's reasonably clean and virtualizable.  Andrea doesn't like it
> > > > because it adds a few instructions to the vsyscall address calculation.
> > > 
> > > yes, my preferred solution is still a runtime /proc entry that turns off
> > > vsyscalls completely by root so you could trap gettimeofday/time via the
> > > usual ptrace. That would be zero cost. Of course this would be needed
> > 
> > Ok, a sysctl that modifies a variable in the vsyscall page and is
> > tested by the code. That would be an option, I agree.
> 
> the sysctl would replace the vsyscall fixmap fixmap entry for the
> current cpu enterely at switch_to time, I certainly don't want to add
> not necessary branches in the core vsyscall code.  Doing it globally is
> zerocost but it would probably need privilegies as said, per-task could
> be more dynamic without privilegies and it would be an unlikely branch
> added in switch_to, still a very low cost so still acceptable.
> 
> > For the locked TSC code we will need something like that anyways,
> > so that locked TSC can force a syscall.
> 
> If we use a per-cpu TSC we don't need the syscall, the cpuid encoded in
> each 64bit variable will be enough (see my past email of yesterday
> evening, I realized a way to hanle per-cpu info with vsyscalls). the
> main problem is as usual that the TSC isn't a real time source, it
> changes frequency all the time, but as usual all the problems in the
> gettimeofday implementation have little to with the vsyscalls details,
> in particular now that I realized how to handle per-cpu data, they're
> generic issues that needs solving even if vsyscalls would redirect to
> the syscalls.
> 
> The only thing we definitely can't do in the vsyscalls is to read the
> PIT because it's an old I/O mapped device, but who could ever live only
> with the PIT anyways these computing days? If you've only the PIT
> vsyscalls or not the gettimeofday functionality would suck.
> 
> Andrea


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