Re: [RFC PATCH] x86: Barf when faults happen in NMI

From: Ingo Molnar
Date: Tue Sep 28 2010 - 06:36:34 EST



* Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> In x86, faults exit by executing the iret instruction, which then
> reenables NMIs if we faulted in NMI context. Then if a fault happens
> in NMI, another NMI can nest after the fault exits.
>
> But we don't yet support nested NMIs because we have only one NMI
> stack. To prevent that, trigger a bug when a fault happens in NMI
> context.
>
> Signed-off-by: Frederic Weisbecker <fweisbec@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@xxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Cc: Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@xxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>
> I first thought about putting it in the vmalloc fault path only. But
> then I saw more occasions for the kernel to fault (kmemcheck or so),
> and so I thought it should be better put in the all in one path. But I
> suspect you won't like that conditional in the big x86 fault path.
>
>
> arch/x86/mm/fault.c | 2 ++
> 1 files changed, 2 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/x86/mm/fault.c b/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
> index 4c4508e..80c997e 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
> +++ b/arch/x86/mm/fault.c
> @@ -955,6 +955,8 @@ do_page_fault(struct pt_regs *regs, unsigned long error_code)
> int write;
> int fault;
>
> + BUG_ON(in_nmi());
> +

Hm, this is a fastpath, so it would be nice to put this into the vmalloc
and kmemcheck paths (even though it's less clean that way).

Also, a WARN_ON_ONCE() would probably help more in getting bug reports
out of such systems, than a BUG_ON() crashed kernel.

Thanks,

Ingo
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