Re: [PATCH 1/2 v3] x86: introduce int3-based instruction patching

From: Steven Rostedt
Date: Thu Jul 11 2013 - 22:09:16 EST


On Fri, 2013-07-12 at 00:31 +0200, Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On Thu, 11 Jul 2013, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
>
> > > synchronization after replacing "all but first" instructions should not
> > > be necessary (on Intel hardware), as the syncing after the subsequent
> > > patching of the first byte provides enough safety.
> > > But there's not only Intel HW out there, and we'd rather be on a safe
> > > side.
> >
> > Has anyone talked to AMD or VIA about this at all? Did anyone else ever
> > make SMP-capable x86?
>
> If Boris can verify for AMD, that'd be good; we could then just remove one
> extra syncing of the cores as a followup (can be done any time later, both
> for alternative.c and ftrace in fact).
>
> With the "extra" sync, the procedure is already verified to work properly
> by ftace.
>

I'd like to caution on the side of safety. The extra sync really doesn't
hurt. Let's keep it in for a kernel release cycle to make sure
everything else works properly, then we can look at optimizing it.

-- Steve


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