Re: [RFC PATCH] x86/mce: Make mce_rdmsrl() do a plain RDMSR only

From: Andy Lutomirski
Date: Mon Sep 07 2020 - 16:16:59 EST


On Sun, Sep 6, 2020 at 2:21 PM Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Ingo and I talked about this thing this morning and tglx has had it on
> his to-fix list too so here's a first attempt at it.
>
> Below is just a brain dump of what we talked about so let's start with
> it and see where it would take us.
>
> Thx.
>
> ---
>
> From: Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxx>
>
> ... without any exception handling and tracing.
>
> If an exception needs to be handled while reading an MSR - which is in
> most of the cases caused by a #GP on a non-existent MSR - then this
> is most likely the incarnation of a BIOS or a hardware bug. Such bug
> violates the architectural guarantee that MSR banks are present with all
> MSRs belonging to them.
>
> The proper fix belongs in the hardware/firmware - not in the kernel.
>
> Handling exceptions while in #MC and while an NMI is being handled would
> cause the nasty NMI nesting issue because of the shortcoming of IRET
> of reenabling NMIs when executed. And the machine is in an #MC context
> already so <Deity> be at its side.
>
> Tracing MSR accesses while in #MC is another no-no due to tracing being
> inherently a bad idea in atomic context:
>
> vmlinux.o: warning: objtool: do_machine_check()+0x4a: call to mce_rdmsrl() leaves .noinstr.text section
>
> so remove all that "additional" functionality from mce_rdmsrl() and
> concentrate on solely reading the MSRs.
>
> Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@xxxxxxx>
> Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mce/core.c | 18 +++++++-----------
> 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+), 11 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mce/core.c b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mce/core.c
> index 0ba24dfffdb2..14ebdf3e22f3 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mce/core.c
> +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/mce/core.c
> @@ -376,7 +376,7 @@ static int msr_to_offset(u32 msr)
> /* MSR access wrappers used for error injection */
> static u64 mce_rdmsrl(u32 msr)
> {
> - u64 v;
> + DECLARE_ARGS(val, low, high);
>
> if (__this_cpu_read(injectm.finished)) {
> int offset = msr_to_offset(msr);
> @@ -386,17 +386,13 @@ static u64 mce_rdmsrl(u32 msr)
> return *(u64 *)((char *)this_cpu_ptr(&injectm) + offset);
> }
>
> - if (rdmsrl_safe(msr, &v)) {
> - WARN_ONCE(1, "mce: Unable to read MSR 0x%x!\n", msr);
> - /*
> - * Return zero in case the access faulted. This should
> - * not happen normally but can happen if the CPU does
> - * something weird, or if the code is buggy.
> - */
> - v = 0;
> - }
> + /*
> + * RDMSR on MCA MSRs should not fault. If they do, this is very much an
> + * architectural violation and needs to be reported to hw vendor.
> + */
> + asm volatile("rdmsr" : EAX_EDX_RET(val, low, high) : "c" (msr));

I don't like this. Plain rdmsrl() will at least print a nice error if it fails.

Perhaps we should add a read_msr_panic() variant that panics on
failure? Or, if there is just this one case, then we can use
rdmsrl_safe() and print a nice error and panic on failure.