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diff --git a/Documentation/exception.txt b/Documentation/exception.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000000..f1d436993eb1 --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/exception.txt @@ -0,0 +1,292 @@ + Kernel level exception handling in Linux 2.1.8 + Commentary by Joerg Pommnitz <joerg@raleigh.ibm.com> + +When a process runs in kernel mode, it often has to access user +mode memory whose address has been passed by an untrusted program. +To protect itself the kernel has to verify this address. + +In older versions of Linux this was done with the +int verify_area(int type, const void * addr, unsigned long size) +function. + +This function verified that the memory area starting at address +addr and of size size was accessible for the operation specified +in type (read or write). To do this, verify_read had to look up the +virtual memory area (vma) that contained the address addr. In the +normal case (correctly working program), this test was successful. +It only failed for a few buggy programs. In some kernel profiling +tests, this normally unneeded verification used up a considerable +amount of time. + +To overcome this situation, Linus decided to let the virtual memory +hardware present in every Linux-capable CPU handle this test. + +How does this work? + +Whenever the kernel tries to access an address that is currently not +accessible, the CPU generates a page fault exception and calls the +page fault handler + +void do_page_fault(struct pt_regs *regs, unsigned long error_code) + +in arch/i386/mm/fault.c. The parameters on the stack are set up by +the low level assembly glue in arch/i386/kernel/entry.S. The parameter +regs is a pointer to the saved registers on the stack, error_code +contains a reason code for the exception. + +do_page_fault first obtains the unaccessible address from the CPU +control register CR2. If the address is within the virtual address +space of the process, the fault probably occurred, because the page +was not swapped in, write protected or something similar. However, +we are interested in the other case: the address is not valid, there +is no vma that contains this address. In this case, the kernel jumps +to the bad_area label. + +There it uses the address of the instruction that caused the exception +(i.e. regs->eip) to find an address where the execution can continue +(fixup). If this search is successful, the fault handler modifies the +return address (again regs->eip) and returns. The execution will +continue at the address in fixup. + +Where does fixup point to? + +Since we jump to the contents of fixup, fixup obviously points +to executable code. This code is hidden inside the user access macros. +I have picked the get_user macro defined in include/asm/uaccess.h as an +example. The definition is somewhat hard to follow, so let's peek at +the code generated by the preprocessor and the compiler. I selected +the get_user call in drivers/char/console.c for a detailed examination. + +The original code in console.c line 1405: + get_user(c, buf); + +The preprocessor output (edited to become somewhat readable): + +( + { + long __gu_err = - 14 , __gu_val = 0; + const __typeof__(*( ( buf ) )) *__gu_addr = ((buf)); + if (((((0 + current_set[0])->tss.segment) == 0x18 ) || + (((sizeof(*(buf))) <= 0xC0000000UL) && + ((unsigned long)(__gu_addr ) <= 0xC0000000UL - (sizeof(*(buf))))))) + do { + __gu_err = 0; + switch ((sizeof(*(buf)))) { + case 1: + __asm__ __volatile__( + "1: mov" "b" " %2,%" "b" "1\n" + "2:\n" + ".section .fixup,\"ax\"\n" + "3: movl %3,%0\n" + " xor" "b" " %" "b" "1,%" "b" "1\n" + " jmp 2b\n" + ".section __ex_table,\"a\"\n" + " .align 4\n" + " .long 1b,3b\n" + ".text" : "=r"(__gu_err), "=q" (__gu_val): "m"((*(struct __large_struct *) + ( __gu_addr )) ), "i"(- 14 ), "0"( __gu_err )) ; + break; + case 2: + __asm__ __volatile__( + "1: mov" "w" " %2,%" "w" "1\n" + "2:\n" + ".section .fixup,\"ax\"\n" + "3: movl %3,%0\n" + " xor" "w" " %" "w" "1,%" "w" "1\n" + " jmp 2b\n" + ".section __ex_table,\"a\"\n" + " .align 4\n" + " .long 1b,3b\n" + ".text" : "=r"(__gu_err), "=r" (__gu_val) : "m"((*(struct __large_struct *) + ( __gu_addr )) ), "i"(- 14 ), "0"( __gu_err )); + break; + case 4: + __asm__ __volatile__( + "1: mov" "l" " %2,%" "" "1\n" + "2:\n" + ".section .fixup,\"ax\"\n" + "3: movl %3,%0\n" + " xor" "l" " %" "" "1,%" "" "1\n" + " jmp 2b\n" + ".section __ex_table,\"a\"\n" + " .align 4\n" " .long 1b,3b\n" + ".text" : "=r"(__gu_err), "=r" (__gu_val) : "m"((*(struct __large_struct *) + ( __gu_addr )) ), "i"(- 14 ), "0"(__gu_err)); + break; + default: + (__gu_val) = __get_user_bad(); + } + } while (0) ; + ((c)) = (__typeof__(*((buf))))__gu_val; + __gu_err; + } +); + +WOW! Black GCC/assembly magic. This is impossible to follow, so let's +see what code gcc generates: + + > xorl %edx,%edx + > movl current_set,%eax + > cmpl $24,788(%eax) + > je .L1424 + > cmpl $-1073741825,64(%esp) + > ja .L1423 + > .L1424: + > movl %edx,%eax + > movl 64(%esp),%ebx + > #APP + > 1: movb (%ebx),%dl /* this is the actual user access */ + > 2: + > .section .fixup,"ax" + > 3: movl $-14,%eax + > xorb %dl,%dl + > jmp 2b + > .section __ex_table,"a" + > .align 4 + > .long 1b,3b + > .text + > #NO_APP + > .L1423: + > movzbl %dl,%esi + +The optimizer does a good job and gives us something we can actually +understand. Can we? The actual user access is quite obvious. Thanks +to the unified address space we can just access the address in user +memory. But what does the .section stuff do????? + +To understand this we have to look at the final kernel: + + > objdump --section-headers vmlinux + > + > vmlinux: file format elf32-i386 + > + > Sections: + > Idx Name Size VMA LMA File off Algn + > 0 .text 00098f40 c0100000 c0100000 00001000 2**4 + > CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE + > 1 .fixup 000016bc c0198f40 c0198f40 00099f40 2**0 + > CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, CODE + > 2 .rodata 0000f127 c019a5fc c019a5fc 0009b5fc 2**2 + > CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA + > 3 __ex_table 000015c0 c01a9724 c01a9724 000aa724 2**2 + > CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, READONLY, DATA + > 4 .data 0000ea58 c01abcf0 c01abcf0 000abcf0 2**4 + > CONTENTS, ALLOC, LOAD, DATA + > 5 .bss 00018e21 c01ba748 c01ba748 000ba748 2**2 + > ALLOC + > 6 .comment 00000ec4 00000000 00000000 000ba748 2**0 + > CONTENTS, READONLY + > 7 .note 00001068 00000ec4 00000ec4 000bb60c 2**0 + > CONTENTS, READONLY + +There are obviously 2 non standard ELF sections in the generated object +file. But first we want to find out what happened to our code in the +final kernel executable: + + > objdump --disassemble --section=.text vmlinux + > + > c017e785 <do_con_write+c1> xorl %edx,%edx + > c017e787 <do_con_write+c3> movl 0xc01c7bec,%eax + > c017e78c <do_con_write+c8> cmpl $0x18,0x314(%eax) + > c017e793 <do_con_write+cf> je c017e79f <do_con_write+db> + > c017e795 <do_con_write+d1> cmpl $0xbfffffff,0x40(%esp,1) + > c017e79d <do_con_write+d9> ja c017e7a7 <do_con_write+e3> + > c017e79f <do_con_write+db> movl %edx,%eax + > c017e7a1 <do_con_write+dd> movl 0x40(%esp,1),%ebx + > c017e7a5 <do_con_write+e1> movb (%ebx),%dl + > c017e7a7 <do_con_write+e3> movzbl %dl,%esi + +The whole user memory access is reduced to 10 x86 machine instructions. +The instructions bracketed in the .section directives are no longer +in the normal execution path. They are located in a different section +of the executable file: + + > objdump --disassemble --section=.fixup vmlinux + > + > c0199ff5 <.fixup+10b5> movl $0xfffffff2,%eax + > c0199ffa <.fixup+10ba> xorb %dl,%dl + > c0199ffc <.fixup+10bc> jmp c017e7a7 <do_con_write+e3> + +And finally: + > objdump --full-contents --section=__ex_table vmlinux + > + > c01aa7c4 93c017c0 e09f19c0 97c017c0 99c017c0 ................ + > c01aa7d4 f6c217c0 e99f19c0 a5e717c0 f59f19c0 ................ + > c01aa7e4 080a18c0 01a019c0 0a0a18c0 04a019c0 ................ + +or in human readable byte order: + + > c01aa7c4 c017c093 c0199fe0 c017c097 c017c099 ................ + > c01aa7d4 c017c2f6 c0199fe9 c017e7a5 c0199ff5 ................ + ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ + this is the interesting part! + > c01aa7e4 c0180a08 c019a001 c0180a0a c019a004 ................ + +What happened? The assembly directives + +.section .fixup,"ax" +.section __ex_table,"a" + +told the assembler to move the following code to the specified +sections in the ELF object file. So the instructions +3: movl $-14,%eax + xorb %dl,%dl + jmp 2b +ended up in the .fixup section of the object file and the addresses + .long 1b,3b +ended up in the __ex_table section of the object file. 1b and 3b +are local labels. The local label 1b (1b stands for next label 1 +backward) is the address of the instruction that might fault, i.e. +in our case the address of the label 1 is c017e7a5: +the original assembly code: > 1: movb (%ebx),%dl +and linked in vmlinux : > c017e7a5 <do_con_write+e1> movb (%ebx),%dl + +The local label 3 (backwards again) is the address of the code to handle +the fault, in our case the actual value is c0199ff5: +the original assembly code: > 3: movl $-14,%eax +and linked in vmlinux : > c0199ff5 <.fixup+10b5> movl $0xfffffff2,%eax + +The assembly code + > .section __ex_table,"a" + > .align 4 + > .long 1b,3b + +becomes the value pair + > c01aa7d4 c017c2f6 c0199fe9 c017e7a5 c0199ff5 ................ + ^this is ^this is + 1b 3b +c017e7a5,c0199ff5 in the exception table of the kernel. + +So, what actually happens if a fault from kernel mode with no suitable +vma occurs? + +1.) access to invalid address: + > c017e7a5 <do_con_write+e1> movb (%ebx),%dl +2.) MMU generates exception +3.) CPU calls do_page_fault +4.) do page fault calls search_exception_table (regs->eip == c017e7a5); +5.) search_exception_table looks up the address c017e7a5 in the + exception table (i.e. the contents of the ELF section __ex_table) + and returns the address of the associated fault handle code c0199ff5. +6.) do_page_fault modifies its own return address to point to the fault + handle code and returns. +7.) execution continues in the fault handling code. +8.) 8a) EAX becomes -EFAULT (== -14) + 8b) DL becomes zero (the value we "read" from user space) + 8c) execution continues at local label 2 (address of the + instruction immediately after the faulting user access). + +The steps 8a to 8c in a certain way emulate the faulting instruction. + +That's it, mostly. If you look at our example, you might ask why +we set EAX to -EFAULT in the exception handler code. Well, the +get_user macro actually returns a value: 0, if the user access was +successful, -EFAULT on failure. Our original code did not test this +return value, however the inline assembly code in get_user tries to +return -EFAULT. GCC selected EAX to return this value. + +NOTE: +Due to the way that the exception table is built and needs to be ordered, +only use exceptions for code in the .text section. Any other section +will cause the exception table to not be sorted correctly, and the +exceptions will fail. |