Skip to content
Snippets Groups Projects
  • Linus Torvalds's avatar
    49c09ca3
    x86: stop playing stack games in profile_pc() · 49c09ca3
    Linus Torvalds authored
    [ Upstream commit 093d9603 ]
    
    The 'profile_pc()' function is used for timer-based profiling, which
    isn't really all that relevant any more to begin with, but it also ends
    up making assumptions based on the stack layout that aren't necessarily
    valid.
    
    Basically, the code tries to account the time spent in spinlocks to the
    caller rather than the spinlock, and while I support that as a concept,
    it's not worth the code complexity or the KASAN warnings when no serious
    profiling is done using timers anyway these days.
    
    And the code really does depend on stack layout that is only true in the
    simplest of cases.  We've lost the comment at some point (I think when
    the 32-bit and 64-bit code was unified), but it used to say:
    
    	Assume the lock function has either no stack frame or a copy
    	of eflags from PUSHF.
    
    which explains why it just blindly loads a word or two straight off the
    stack pointer and then takes a minimal look at the values to just check
    if they might be eflags or the return pc:
    
    	Eflags always has bits 22 and up cleared unlike kernel addresses
    
    but that basic stack layout assumption assumes that there isn't any lock
    debugging etc going on that would complicate the code and cause a stack
    frame.
    
    It causes KASAN unhappiness reported for years by syzkaller [1] and
    others [2].
    
    With no real practical reason for this any more, just remove the code.
    
    Just for historical interest, here's some background commits relating to
    this code from 2006:
    
      0cb91a22 ("i386: Account spinlocks to the caller during profiling for !FP kernels")
      31679f38 ("Simplify profile_pc on x86-64")
    
    and a code unification from 2009:
    
      ef451288 ("x86: time_32/64.c unify profile_pc")
    
    but the basics of this thing actually goes back to before the git tree.
    
    Link: https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=84fe685c02cd112a2ac3 [1]
    Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAK55_s7Xyq=nh97=K=G1sxueOFrJDAvPOJAL4TPTCAYvmxO9_A@mail.gmail.com/
    
     [2]
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarSasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>
    49c09ca3
    History
    x86: stop playing stack games in profile_pc()
    Linus Torvalds authored
    [ Upstream commit 093d9603 ]
    
    The 'profile_pc()' function is used for timer-based profiling, which
    isn't really all that relevant any more to begin with, but it also ends
    up making assumptions based on the stack layout that aren't necessarily
    valid.
    
    Basically, the code tries to account the time spent in spinlocks to the
    caller rather than the spinlock, and while I support that as a concept,
    it's not worth the code complexity or the KASAN warnings when no serious
    profiling is done using timers anyway these days.
    
    And the code really does depend on stack layout that is only true in the
    simplest of cases.  We've lost the comment at some point (I think when
    the 32-bit and 64-bit code was unified), but it used to say:
    
    	Assume the lock function has either no stack frame or a copy
    	of eflags from PUSHF.
    
    which explains why it just blindly loads a word or two straight off the
    stack pointer and then takes a minimal look at the values to just check
    if they might be eflags or the return pc:
    
    	Eflags always has bits 22 and up cleared unlike kernel addresses
    
    but that basic stack layout assumption assumes that there isn't any lock
    debugging etc going on that would complicate the code and cause a stack
    frame.
    
    It causes KASAN unhappiness reported for years by syzkaller [1] and
    others [2].
    
    With no real practical reason for this any more, just remove the code.
    
    Just for historical interest, here's some background commits relating to
    this code from 2006:
    
      0cb91a22 ("i386: Account spinlocks to the caller during profiling for !FP kernels")
      31679f38 ("Simplify profile_pc on x86-64")
    
    and a code unification from 2009:
    
      ef451288 ("x86: time_32/64.c unify profile_pc")
    
    but the basics of this thing actually goes back to before the git tree.
    
    Link: https://syzkaller.appspot.com/bug?extid=84fe685c02cd112a2ac3 [1]
    Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAK55_s7Xyq=nh97=K=G1sxueOFrJDAvPOJAL4TPTCAYvmxO9_A@mail.gmail.com/
    
     [2]
    Signed-off-by: default avatarLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarSasha Levin <sashal@kernel.org>