From: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Subject: Re: x86-64: Maintain 16-byte stack alignment
Date: Thu, 12 Jan 2017 21:11:07 -0600
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Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
        Herbert Xu <herbert@gondor.apana.org.au>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
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        Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
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To: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
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On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 05:46:55PM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 12:15 PM, Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 12:08:07PM -0800, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> >> On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 11:51 AM, Linus Torvalds
> >> <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> wrote:
> >> > On Thu, Jan 12, 2017 at 6:02 AM, Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com> wrote:
> >> >>
> >> >> Just to clarify, I think you're asking if, for versions of gcc which
> >> >> don't support -mpreferred-stack-boundary=3, objtool can analyze all C
> >> >> functions to ensure their stacks are 16-byte aligned.
> >> >>
> >> >> It's certainly possible, but I don't see how that solves the problem.
> >> >> The stack will still be misaligned by entry code.  Or am I missing
> >> >> something?
> >> >
> >> > I think the argument is that we *could* try to align things, if we
> >> > just had some tool that actually then verified that we aren't missing
> >> > anything.
> >> >
> >> > I'm not entirely happy with checking the generated code, though,
> >> > because as Ingo says, you have a 50:50 chance of just getting it right
> >> > by mistake. So I'd much rather have some static tool that checks
> >> > things at a code level (ie coccinelle or sparse).
> >>
> >> What I meant was checking the entry code to see if it aligns stack
> >> frames, and good luck getting sparse to do that.  Hmm, getting 16-byte
> >> alignment for real may actually be entirely a lost cause.  After all,
> >> I think we have some inline functions that do asm volatile ("call
> >> ..."), and I don't see any credible way of forcing alignment short of
> >> generating an entirely new stack frame and aligning that.
> >
> > Actually we already found all such cases and fixed them by forcing a new
> > stack frame, thanks to objtool.  For example, see 55a76b59b5fe.
> 
> What I mean is: what guarantees that the stack is properly aligned for
> the subroutine call?  gcc promises to set up a stack frame, but does
> it promise that rsp will be properly aligned to call a C function?

Yes, I did an experiment and you're right.  I had naively assumed that
all stack frames would be aligned.

-- 
Josh