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Message-ID: <eec6b477-67b5-49d6-b6f4-dd2c242b9bdb@zytor.com>
Date:   Wed, 11 Oct 2023 16:20:06 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PATCH v3 00/23] Add generic vdso_base tracking
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To:     Dmitry Safonov <dima@arista.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Cc:     Dmitry Safonov <0x7f454c46@gmail.com>,
        Alexander Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>,
        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@arndb.de>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
        Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>,
        Christophe Leroy <christophe.leroy@csgroup.eu>,
        Guo Ren <guoren@kernel.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>,
        Oleg Nesterov <oleg@redhat.com>,
        Russell King <linux@armlinux.org.uk>,
        Thomas Bogendoerfer <tsbogend@alpha.franken.de>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Vincenzo Frascino <vincenzo.frascino@arm.com>,
        Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>, x86@kernel.org
References: <20210611180242.711399-1-dima@arista.com>
From:   "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
In-Reply-To: <20210611180242.711399-1-dima@arista.com>
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On 6/11/21 11:02, Dmitry Safonov wrote:
> 
> Patches set is based on linux-next (next-20201123) and it depends on
> changes in x86/cleanups (those reclaim TIF_IA32/TIF_X32) and also
> on my changes in akpm (fixing several mremap() issues).
> 
> Logically, the patches set divides on:
> - patch       1: a cleanup for patches in x86/cleanups
> - patches  2-13: cleanups for arch_setup_additional_pages()
> - patches 13-14: x86 signal changes for unmapped vdso
> - patches 15-22: provide generic vdso_base in mm_struct
> - patch      23: selftest for unmapped vDSO & fast syscalls
> 
> In the end, besides cleanups, it's now more predictable what happens for
> applications with unmapped vdso on architectures those support .mremap()
> for vdso/sigpage.
> 
> I'm aware of only one user that unmaps vdso - Valgrind [2].
> (there possibly are more, but this one is "special", it unmaps vdso, but
>   not vvar, which confuses CRIU [Checkpoint Restore In Userspace], that's
>   why I'm aware of it)
> 

There was another discussion that might be relevant: actually 
associating the vdso with an actual file, and allowing a program to map 
said file normally if it want access to one that it normally wouldn't 
have (say, /proc/vdso/x86_64.so versus /proc/vdso/i386.so on the same 
system.)

The "catch", of course, is that this file will need to be mapped as 
MAP_SHARED because of vdso data.

	-hpa