From e54fdcca70a33a7e447e526b305db85e978c0563 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Andy Lutomirski Date: Tue, 16 Feb 2016 15:09:01 -0800 Subject: x86/signal/64: Add a comment about sigcontext->fs and gs These fields have a strange history. This tries to document it. This borrows from 9a036b93a344 ("x86/signal/64: Remove 'fs' and 'gs' from sigcontext"), which was reverted by ed596cde9425 ("Revert x86 sigcontext cleanups"). Signed-off-by: Andy Lutomirski Acked-by: Borislav Petkov Cc: Al Viro Cc: Andy Lutomirski Cc: Brian Gerst Cc: Cyrill Gorcunov Cc: Denys Vlasenko Cc: H. Peter Anvin Cc: Linus Torvalds Cc: Oleg Nesterov Cc: Pavel Emelyanov Cc: Peter Zijlstra Cc: Stas Sergeev Cc: Thomas Gleixner Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/baa78f3c84106fa5acbc319377b1850602f5deec.1455664054.git.luto@kernel.org Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar --- arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/sigcontext.h | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 25 insertions(+) (limited to 'arch/x86/include') diff --git a/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/sigcontext.h b/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/sigcontext.h index d485232f1e9f..702c40468859 100644 --- a/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/sigcontext.h +++ b/arch/x86/include/uapi/asm/sigcontext.h @@ -341,6 +341,31 @@ struct sigcontext { __u64 rip; __u64 eflags; /* RFLAGS */ __u16 cs; + + /* + * Prior to 2.5.64 ("[PATCH] x86-64 updates for 2.5.64-bk3"), + * Linux saved and restored fs and gs in these slots. This + * was counterproductive, as fsbase and gsbase were never + * saved, so arch_prctl was presumably unreliable. + * + * These slots should never be reused without extreme caution: + * + * - Some DOSEMU versions stash fs and gs in these slots manually, + * thus overwriting anything the kernel expects to be preserved + * in these slots. + * + * - If these slots are ever needed for any other purpose, + * there is some risk that very old 64-bit binaries could get + * confused. I doubt that many such binaries still work, + * though, since the same patch in 2.5.64 also removed the + * 64-bit set_thread_area syscall, so it appears that there + * is no TLS API beyond modify_ldt that works in both pre- + * and post-2.5.64 kernels. + * + * If the kernel ever adds explicit fs, gs, fsbase, and gsbase + * save/restore, it will most likely need to be opt-in and use + * different context slots. + */ __u16 gs; __u16 fs; __u16 __pad0; -- cgit v1.2.3