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authorIngo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>2006-06-27 02:53:50 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>2006-06-27 17:32:38 -0700
commite6e5494cb23d1933735ee47cc674ffe1c4afed6f (patch)
treec8945bb3ae5bec38693d801fb589d22d48d6f8eb /Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
parentd5fb34261dcd32c9cb3b28121fdc46308db513a1 (diff)
[PATCH] vdso: randomize the i386 vDSO by moving it into a vma
Move the i386 VDSO down into a vma and thus randomize it. Besides the security implications, this feature also helps debuggers, which can COW a vma-backed VDSO just like a normal DSO and can thus do single-stepping and other debugging features. It's good for hypervisors (Xen, VMWare) too, which typically live in the same high-mapped address space as the VDSO, hence whenever the VDSO is used, they get lots of guest pagefaults and have to fix such guest accesses up - which slows things down instead of speeding things up (the primary purpose of the VDSO). There's a new CONFIG_COMPAT_VDSO (default=y) option, which provides support for older glibcs that still rely on a prelinked high-mapped VDSO. Newer distributions (using glibc 2.3.3 or later) can turn this option off. Turning it off is also recommended for security reasons: attackers cannot use the predictable high-mapped VDSO page as syscall trampoline anymore. There is a new vdso=[0|1] boot option as well, and a runtime /proc/sys/vm/vdso_enabled sysctl switch, that allows the VDSO to be turned on/off. (This version of the VDSO-randomization patch also has working ELF coredumping, the previous patch crashed in the coredumping code.) This code is a combined work of the exec-shield VDSO randomization code and Gerd Hoffmann's hypervisor-centric VDSO patch. Rusty Russell started this patch and i completed it. [akpm@osdl.org: cleanups] [akpm@osdl.org: compile fix] [akpm@osdl.org: compile fix 2] [akpm@osdl.org: compile fix 3] [akpm@osdl.org: revernt MAXMEM change] Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu> Signed-off-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org> Cc: Gerd Hoffmann <kraxel@suse.de> Cc: Rusty Russell <rusty@rustcorp.com.au> Cc: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com> Cc: Andi Kleen <ak@muc.de> Cc: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@novell.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt4
1 files changed, 4 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
index 2e352a605fcf..0d189c93eeaf 100644
--- a/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
+++ b/Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt
@@ -1669,6 +1669,10 @@ running once the system is up.
usbhid.mousepoll=
[USBHID] The interval which mice are to be polled at.
+ vdso= [IA-32]
+ vdso=1: enable VDSO (default)
+ vdso=0: disable VDSO mapping
+
video= [FB] Frame buffer configuration
See Documentation/fb/modedb.txt.