<feed xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'>
<title>linux.git/Documentation/sysctl, branch v4.8</title>
<subtitle>Linux kernel source tree</subtitle>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/'/>
<entry>
<title>printk: add kernel parameter to control writes to /dev/kmsg</title>
<updated>2016-08-02T23:35:06+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Borislav Petkov</name>
<email>bp@suse.de</email>
</author>
<published>2016-08-02T21:04:07+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=750afe7babd117daabebf4855da18e4418ea845e'/>
<id>750afe7babd117daabebf4855da18e4418ea845e</id>
<content type='text'>
Add a "printk.devkmsg" kernel command line parameter which controls how
userspace writes into /dev/kmsg.  It has three options:

 * ratelimit - ratelimit logging from userspace.
 * on  - unlimited logging from userspace
 * off - logging from userspace gets ignored

The default setting is to ratelimit the messages written to it.

This changes the kernel default setting of "on" to "ratelimit" and we do
that because we want to keep userspace spamming /dev/kmsg to sane
levels.  This is especially moot when a small kernel log buffer wraps
around and messages get lost.  So the ratelimiting setting should be a
sane setting where kernel messages should have a bit higher chance of
survival from all the spamming.

It additionally does not limit logging to /dev/kmsg while the system is
booting if we haven't disabled it on the command line.

Furthermore, we can control the logging from a lower priority sysctl
interface - kernel.printk_devkmsg.

That interface will succeed only if printk.devkmsg *hasn't* been
supplied on the command line.  If it has, then printk.devkmsg is a
one-time setting which remains for the duration of the system lifetime.
This "locking" of the setting is to prevent userspace from changing the
logging on us through sysctl(2).

This patch is based on previous patches from Linus and Steven.

[bp@suse.de: fixes]
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160719072344.GC25563@nazgul.tnic
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160716061745.15795-3-bp@alien8.de
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov &lt;bp@suse.de&gt;
Cc: Dave Young &lt;dyoung@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Franck Bui &lt;fbui@suse.com&gt;
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;
Cc: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@kernel.org&gt;
Cc: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Cc: Peter Zijlstra &lt;peterz@infradead.org&gt;
Cc: Steven Rostedt &lt;rostedt@goodmis.org&gt;
Cc: Uwe Kleine-König &lt;u.kleine-koenig@pengutronix.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Add a "printk.devkmsg" kernel command line parameter which controls how
userspace writes into /dev/kmsg.  It has three options:

 * ratelimit - ratelimit logging from userspace.
 * on  - unlimited logging from userspace
 * off - logging from userspace gets ignored

The default setting is to ratelimit the messages written to it.

This changes the kernel default setting of "on" to "ratelimit" and we do
that because we want to keep userspace spamming /dev/kmsg to sane
levels.  This is especially moot when a small kernel log buffer wraps
around and messages get lost.  So the ratelimiting setting should be a
sane setting where kernel messages should have a bit higher chance of
survival from all the spamming.

It additionally does not limit logging to /dev/kmsg while the system is
booting if we haven't disabled it on the command line.

Furthermore, we can control the logging from a lower priority sysctl
interface - kernel.printk_devkmsg.

That interface will succeed only if printk.devkmsg *hasn't* been
supplied on the command line.  If it has, then printk.devkmsg is a
one-time setting which remains for the duration of the system lifetime.
This "locking" of the setting is to prevent userspace from changing the
logging on us through sysctl(2).

This patch is based on previous patches from Linus and Steven.

[bp@suse.de: fixes]
  Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160719072344.GC25563@nazgul.tnic
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20160716061745.15795-3-bp@alien8.de
Signed-off-by: Borislav Petkov &lt;bp@suse.de&gt;
Cc: Dave Young &lt;dyoung@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Franck Bui &lt;fbui@suse.com&gt;
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman &lt;gregkh@linuxfoundation.org&gt;
Cc: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@kernel.org&gt;
Cc: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Cc: Peter Zijlstra &lt;peterz@infradead.org&gt;
Cc: Steven Rostedt &lt;rostedt@goodmis.org&gt;
Cc: Uwe Kleine-König &lt;u.kleine-koenig@pengutronix.de&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge tag 'docs-for-linus' of git://git.lwn.net/linux</title>
<updated>2016-07-26T20:05:11+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2016-07-26T20:05:11+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=0f776dc377f6c87f4e4d4a5f63602f33fb93b31e'/>
<id>0f776dc377f6c87f4e4d4a5f63602f33fb93b31e</id>
<content type='text'>
Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet:
 "Some big changes this month, headlined by the addition of a new
  formatted documentation mechanism based on the Sphinx system.

  The objectives here are to make it easier to create better-integrated
  (and more attractive) documents while (eventually) dumping our
  one-of-a-kind, cobbled-together system for something that is widely
  used and maintained by others.  There's a fair amount of information
  what's being done, why, and how to use it in:

    https://lwn.net/Articles/692704/
    https://lwn.net/Articles/692705/

  Closer to home, Documentation/kernel-documentation.rst describes how
  it works.

  For now, the new system exists alongside the old one; you should soon
  see the GPU documentation converted over in the DRM pull and some
  significant media conversion work as well.  Once all the docs have
  been moved over and we're convinced that the rough edges (of which are
  are a few) have been smoothed over, the DocBook-based stuff should go
  away.

  Primary credit is to Jani Nikula for doing the heavy lifting to make
  this stuff actually work; there has also been notable effort from
  Markus Heiser, Daniel Vetter, and Mauro Carvalho Chehab.

  Expect a couple of conflicts on the new index.rst file over the course
  of the merge window; they are trivially resolvable.  That file may be
  a bit of a conflict magnet in the short term, but I don't expect that
  situation to last for any real length of time.

  Beyond that, of course, we have the usual collection of tweaks,
  updates, and typo fixes"

* tag 'docs-for-linus' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (77 commits)
  doc-rst: kernel-doc: fix handling of address_space tags
  Revert "doc/sphinx: Enable keep_warnings"
  doc-rst: kernel-doc directive, fix state machine reporter
  docs: deprecate kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt
  doc/sphinx: Enable keep_warnings
  Documentation: add watermark_scale_factor to the list of vm systcl file
  kernel-doc: Fix up warning output
  docs: Get rid of some kernel-documentation warnings
  doc-rst: add an option to ignore DocBooks when generating docs
  workqueue: Fix a typo in workqueue.txt
  Doc: ocfs: Fix typo in filesystems/ocfs2-online-filecheck.txt
  Documentation/sphinx: skip build if user requested specific DOCBOOKS
  Documentation: add cleanmediadocs to the documentation targets
  Add .pyc files to .gitignore
  Doc: PM: Fix a typo in intel_powerclamp.txt
  doc-rst: flat-table directive - initial implementation
  Documentation: add meta-documentation for Sphinx and kernel-doc
  Documentation: tiny typo fix in usb/gadget_multi.txt
  Documentation: fix wrong value in md.txt
  bcache: documentation formatting, edited for clarity, stripe alignment notes
  ...
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Pull documentation updates from Jonathan Corbet:
 "Some big changes this month, headlined by the addition of a new
  formatted documentation mechanism based on the Sphinx system.

  The objectives here are to make it easier to create better-integrated
  (and more attractive) documents while (eventually) dumping our
  one-of-a-kind, cobbled-together system for something that is widely
  used and maintained by others.  There's a fair amount of information
  what's being done, why, and how to use it in:

    https://lwn.net/Articles/692704/
    https://lwn.net/Articles/692705/

  Closer to home, Documentation/kernel-documentation.rst describes how
  it works.

  For now, the new system exists alongside the old one; you should soon
  see the GPU documentation converted over in the DRM pull and some
  significant media conversion work as well.  Once all the docs have
  been moved over and we're convinced that the rough edges (of which are
  are a few) have been smoothed over, the DocBook-based stuff should go
  away.

  Primary credit is to Jani Nikula for doing the heavy lifting to make
  this stuff actually work; there has also been notable effort from
  Markus Heiser, Daniel Vetter, and Mauro Carvalho Chehab.

  Expect a couple of conflicts on the new index.rst file over the course
  of the merge window; they are trivially resolvable.  That file may be
  a bit of a conflict magnet in the short term, but I don't expect that
  situation to last for any real length of time.

  Beyond that, of course, we have the usual collection of tweaks,
  updates, and typo fixes"

* tag 'docs-for-linus' of git://git.lwn.net/linux: (77 commits)
  doc-rst: kernel-doc: fix handling of address_space tags
  Revert "doc/sphinx: Enable keep_warnings"
  doc-rst: kernel-doc directive, fix state machine reporter
  docs: deprecate kernel-doc-nano-HOWTO.txt
  doc/sphinx: Enable keep_warnings
  Documentation: add watermark_scale_factor to the list of vm systcl file
  kernel-doc: Fix up warning output
  docs: Get rid of some kernel-documentation warnings
  doc-rst: add an option to ignore DocBooks when generating docs
  workqueue: Fix a typo in workqueue.txt
  Doc: ocfs: Fix typo in filesystems/ocfs2-online-filecheck.txt
  Documentation/sphinx: skip build if user requested specific DOCBOOKS
  Documentation: add cleanmediadocs to the documentation targets
  Add .pyc files to .gitignore
  Doc: PM: Fix a typo in intel_powerclamp.txt
  doc-rst: flat-table directive - initial implementation
  Documentation: add meta-documentation for Sphinx and kernel-doc
  Documentation: tiny typo fix in usb/gadget_multi.txt
  Documentation: fix wrong value in md.txt
  bcache: documentation formatting, edited for clarity, stripe alignment notes
  ...
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Documentation: add watermark_scale_factor to the list of vm systcl file</title>
<updated>2016-07-18T14:27:01+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Jerome Marchand</name>
<email>jmarchan@redhat.com</email>
</author>
<published>2016-07-12T10:05:59+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=e6507a00fd08986ce003012a10af78cc7e47eee8'/>
<id>e6507a00fd08986ce003012a10af78cc7e47eee8</id>
<content type='text'>
Commit 795ae7a0de6b ("mm: scale kswapd watermarks in proportion to
memory") properly added the description of the new knob to
Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt, but forgot to add it to the list of files
in /proc/sys/vm. Let's fix that.

Signed-off-by: Jerome Marchand &lt;jmarchan@redhat.com&gt;
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner &lt;hannes@cmpxchg.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet &lt;corbet@lwn.net&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Commit 795ae7a0de6b ("mm: scale kswapd watermarks in proportion to
memory") properly added the description of the new knob to
Documentation/sysctl/vm.txt, but forgot to add it to the list of files
in /proc/sys/vm. Let's fix that.

Signed-off-by: Jerome Marchand &lt;jmarchan@redhat.com&gt;
Acked-by: Johannes Weiner &lt;hannes@cmpxchg.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet &lt;corbet@lwn.net&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>rcu: sysctl: Panic on RCU Stall</title>
<updated>2016-06-15T23:00:05+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Daniel Bristot de Oliveira</name>
<email>bristot@redhat.com</email>
</author>
<published>2016-06-02T16:51:41+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=088e9d253d3a4ab7e058dd84bb532c32dadf1882'/>
<id>088e9d253d3a4ab7e058dd84bb532c32dadf1882</id>
<content type='text'>
It is not always easy to determine the cause of an RCU stall just by
analysing the RCU stall messages, mainly when the problem is caused
by the indirect starvation of rcu threads. For example, when preempt_rcu
is not awakened due to the starvation of a timer softirq.

We have been hard coding panic() in the RCU stall functions for
some time while testing the kernel-rt. But this is not possible in
some scenarios, like when supporting customers.

This patch implements the sysctl kernel.panic_on_rcu_stall. If
set to 1, the system will panic() when an RCU stall takes place,
enabling the capture of a vmcore. The vmcore provides a way to analyze
all kernel/tasks states, helping out to point to the culprit and the
solution for the stall.

The kernel.panic_on_rcu_stall sysctl is disabled by default.

Changes from v1:
- Fixed a typo in the git log
- The if(sysctl_panic_on_rcu_stall) panic() is in a static function
- Fixed the CONFIG_TINY_RCU compilation issue
- The var sysctl_panic_on_rcu_stall is now __read_mostly

Cc: Jonathan Corbet &lt;corbet@lwn.net&gt;
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Josh Triplett &lt;josh@joshtriplett.org&gt;
Cc: Steven Rostedt &lt;rostedt@goodmis.org&gt;
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers &lt;mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com&gt;
Cc: Lai Jiangshan &lt;jiangshanlai@gmail.com&gt;
Acked-by: Christian Borntraeger &lt;borntraeger@de.ibm.com&gt;
Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett &lt;josh@joshtriplett.org&gt;
Reviewed-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo &lt;acme@kernel.org&gt;
Tested-by: "Luis Claudio R. Goncalves" &lt;lgoncalv@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Daniel Bristot de Oliveira &lt;bristot@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
It is not always easy to determine the cause of an RCU stall just by
analysing the RCU stall messages, mainly when the problem is caused
by the indirect starvation of rcu threads. For example, when preempt_rcu
is not awakened due to the starvation of a timer softirq.

We have been hard coding panic() in the RCU stall functions for
some time while testing the kernel-rt. But this is not possible in
some scenarios, like when supporting customers.

This patch implements the sysctl kernel.panic_on_rcu_stall. If
set to 1, the system will panic() when an RCU stall takes place,
enabling the capture of a vmcore. The vmcore provides a way to analyze
all kernel/tasks states, helping out to point to the culprit and the
solution for the stall.

The kernel.panic_on_rcu_stall sysctl is disabled by default.

Changes from v1:
- Fixed a typo in the git log
- The if(sysctl_panic_on_rcu_stall) panic() is in a static function
- Fixed the CONFIG_TINY_RCU compilation issue
- The var sysctl_panic_on_rcu_stall is now __read_mostly

Cc: Jonathan Corbet &lt;corbet@lwn.net&gt;
Cc: "Paul E. McKenney" &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
Cc: Josh Triplett &lt;josh@joshtriplett.org&gt;
Cc: Steven Rostedt &lt;rostedt@goodmis.org&gt;
Cc: Mathieu Desnoyers &lt;mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com&gt;
Cc: Lai Jiangshan &lt;jiangshanlai@gmail.com&gt;
Acked-by: Christian Borntraeger &lt;borntraeger@de.ibm.com&gt;
Reviewed-by: Josh Triplett &lt;josh@joshtriplett.org&gt;
Reviewed-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo &lt;acme@kernel.org&gt;
Tested-by: "Luis Claudio R. Goncalves" &lt;lgoncalv@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Daniel Bristot de Oliveira &lt;bristot@redhat.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Paul E. McKenney &lt;paulmck@linux.vnet.ibm.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branch 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip</title>
<updated>2016-05-26T00:05:40+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2016-05-26T00:05:40+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=bdc6b758e443c21c39a14c075e5b7e01f095b37b'/>
<id>bdc6b758e443c21c39a14c075e5b7e01f095b37b</id>
<content type='text'>
Pull perf updates from Ingo Molnar:
 "Mostly tooling and PMU driver fixes, but also a number of late updates
  such as the reworking of the call-chain size limiting logic to make
  call-graph recording more robust, plus tooling side changes for the
  new 'backwards ring-buffer' extension to the perf ring-buffer"

* 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: (34 commits)
  perf record: Read from backward ring buffer
  perf record: Rename variable to make code clear
  perf record: Prevent reading invalid data in record__mmap_read
  perf evlist: Add API to pause/resume
  perf trace: Use the ptr-&gt;name beautifier as default for "filename" args
  perf trace: Use the fd-&gt;name beautifier as default for "fd" args
  perf report: Add srcline_from/to branch sort keys
  perf evsel: Record fd into perf_mmap
  perf evsel: Add overwrite attribute and check write_backward
  perf tools: Set buildid dir under symfs when --symfs is provided
  perf trace: Only auto set call-graph to "dwarf" when syscalls are being traced
  perf annotate: Sort list of recognised instructions
  perf annotate: Fix identification of ARM blt and bls instructions
  perf tools: Fix usage of max_stack sysctl
  perf callchain: Stop validating callchains by the max_stack sysctl
  perf trace: Fix exit_group() formatting
  perf top: Use machine-&gt;kptr_restrict_warned
  perf trace: Warn when trying to resolve kernel addresses with kptr_restrict=1
  perf machine: Do not bail out if not managing to read ref reloc symbol
  perf/x86/intel/p4: Trival indentation fix, remove space
  ...
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Pull perf updates from Ingo Molnar:
 "Mostly tooling and PMU driver fixes, but also a number of late updates
  such as the reworking of the call-chain size limiting logic to make
  call-graph recording more robust, plus tooling side changes for the
  new 'backwards ring-buffer' extension to the perf ring-buffer"

* 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip: (34 commits)
  perf record: Read from backward ring buffer
  perf record: Rename variable to make code clear
  perf record: Prevent reading invalid data in record__mmap_read
  perf evlist: Add API to pause/resume
  perf trace: Use the ptr-&gt;name beautifier as default for "filename" args
  perf trace: Use the fd-&gt;name beautifier as default for "fd" args
  perf report: Add srcline_from/to branch sort keys
  perf evsel: Record fd into perf_mmap
  perf evsel: Add overwrite attribute and check write_backward
  perf tools: Set buildid dir under symfs when --symfs is provided
  perf trace: Only auto set call-graph to "dwarf" when syscalls are being traced
  perf annotate: Sort list of recognised instructions
  perf annotate: Fix identification of ARM blt and bls instructions
  perf tools: Fix usage of max_stack sysctl
  perf callchain: Stop validating callchains by the max_stack sysctl
  perf trace: Fix exit_group() formatting
  perf top: Use machine-&gt;kptr_restrict_warned
  perf trace: Warn when trying to resolve kernel addresses with kptr_restrict=1
  perf machine: Do not bail out if not managing to read ref reloc symbol
  perf/x86/intel/p4: Trival indentation fix, remove space
  ...
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>mm: /proc/sys/vm/stat_refresh to force vmstat update</title>
<updated>2016-05-20T02:12:14+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Hugh Dickins</name>
<email>hughd@google.com</email>
</author>
<published>2016-05-20T00:12:50+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=52b6f46bc163eef17ecba4cd552beeafe2b24453'/>
<id>52b6f46bc163eef17ecba4cd552beeafe2b24453</id>
<content type='text'>
Provide /proc/sys/vm/stat_refresh to force an immediate update of
per-cpu into global vmstats: useful to avoid a sleep(2) or whatever
before checking counts when testing.  Originally added to work around a
bug which left counts stranded indefinitely on a cpu going idle (an
inaccuracy magnified when small below-batch numbers represent "huge"
amounts of memory), but I believe that bug is now fixed: nonetheless,
this is still a useful knob.

Its schedule_on_each_cpu() is probably too expensive just to fold into
reading /proc/meminfo itself: give this mode 0600 to prevent abuse.
Allow a write or a read to do the same: nothing to read, but "grep -h
Shmem /proc/sys/vm/stat_refresh /proc/meminfo" is convenient.  Oh, and
since global_page_state() itself is careful to disguise any underflow as
0, hack in an "Invalid argument" and pr_warn() if a counter is negative
after the refresh - this helped to fix a misaccounting of
NR_ISOLATED_FILE in my migration code.

But on recent kernels, I find that NR_ALLOC_BATCH and NR_PAGES_SCANNED
often go negative some of the time.  I have not yet worked out why, but
have no evidence that it's actually harmful.  Punt for the moment by
just ignoring the anomaly on those.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins &lt;hughd@google.com&gt;
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" &lt;kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com&gt;
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli &lt;aarcange@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Andres Lagar-Cavilla &lt;andreslc@google.com&gt;
Cc: Yang Shi &lt;yang.shi@linaro.org&gt;
Cc: Ning Qu &lt;quning@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@techsingularity.net&gt;
Cc: Andres Lagar-Cavilla &lt;andreslc@google.com&gt;
Cc: Konstantin Khlebnikov &lt;koct9i@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Provide /proc/sys/vm/stat_refresh to force an immediate update of
per-cpu into global vmstats: useful to avoid a sleep(2) or whatever
before checking counts when testing.  Originally added to work around a
bug which left counts stranded indefinitely on a cpu going idle (an
inaccuracy magnified when small below-batch numbers represent "huge"
amounts of memory), but I believe that bug is now fixed: nonetheless,
this is still a useful knob.

Its schedule_on_each_cpu() is probably too expensive just to fold into
reading /proc/meminfo itself: give this mode 0600 to prevent abuse.
Allow a write or a read to do the same: nothing to read, but "grep -h
Shmem /proc/sys/vm/stat_refresh /proc/meminfo" is convenient.  Oh, and
since global_page_state() itself is careful to disguise any underflow as
0, hack in an "Invalid argument" and pr_warn() if a counter is negative
after the refresh - this helped to fix a misaccounting of
NR_ISOLATED_FILE in my migration code.

But on recent kernels, I find that NR_ALLOC_BATCH and NR_PAGES_SCANNED
often go negative some of the time.  I have not yet worked out why, but
have no evidence that it's actually harmful.  Punt for the moment by
just ignoring the anomaly on those.

Signed-off-by: Hugh Dickins &lt;hughd@google.com&gt;
Cc: "Kirill A. Shutemov" &lt;kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com&gt;
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli &lt;aarcange@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Andres Lagar-Cavilla &lt;andreslc@google.com&gt;
Cc: Yang Shi &lt;yang.shi@linaro.org&gt;
Cc: Ning Qu &lt;quning@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Mel Gorman &lt;mgorman@techsingularity.net&gt;
Cc: Andres Lagar-Cavilla &lt;andreslc@google.com&gt;
Cc: Konstantin Khlebnikov &lt;koct9i@gmail.com&gt;
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton &lt;akpm@linux-foundation.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds &lt;torvalds@linux-foundation.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next</title>
<updated>2016-05-17T23:26:30+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Linus Torvalds</name>
<email>torvalds@linux-foundation.org</email>
</author>
<published>2016-05-17T23:26:30+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=a7fd20d1c476af4563e66865213474a2f9f473a4'/>
<id>a7fd20d1c476af4563e66865213474a2f9f473a4</id>
<content type='text'>
Pull networking updates from David Miller:
 "Highlights:

   1) Support SPI based w5100 devices, from Akinobu Mita.

   2) Partial Segmentation Offload, from Alexander Duyck.

   3) Add GMAC4 support to stmmac driver, from Alexandre TORGUE.

   4) Allow cls_flower stats offload, from Amir Vadai.

   5) Implement bpf blinding, from Daniel Borkmann.

   6) Optimize _ASYNC_ bit twiddling on sockets, unless the socket is
      actually using FASYNC these atomics are superfluous.  From Eric
      Dumazet.

   7) Run TCP more preemptibly, also from Eric Dumazet.

   8) Support LED blinking, EEPROM dumps, and rxvlan offloading in mlx5e
      driver, from Gal Pressman.

   9) Allow creating ppp devices via rtnetlink, from Guillaume Nault.

  10) Improve BPF usage documentation, from Jesper Dangaard Brouer.

  11) Support tunneling offloads in qed, from Manish Chopra.

  12) aRFS offloading in mlx5e, from Maor Gottlieb.

  13) Add RFS and RPS support to SCTP protocol, from Marcelo Ricardo
      Leitner.

  14) Add MSG_EOR support to TCP, this allows controlling packet
      coalescing on application record boundaries for more accurate
      socket timestamp sampling.  From Martin KaFai Lau.

  15) Fix alignment of 64-bit netlink attributes across the board, from
      Nicolas Dichtel.

  16) Per-vlan stats in bridging, from Nikolay Aleksandrov.

  17) Several conversions of drivers to ethtool ksettings, from Philippe
      Reynes.

  18) Checksum neutral ILA in ipv6, from Tom Herbert.

  19) Factorize all of the various marvell dsa drivers into one, from
      Vivien Didelot

  20) Add VF support to qed driver, from Yuval Mintz"

* git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next: (1649 commits)
  Revert "phy dp83867: Fix compilation with CONFIG_OF_MDIO=m"
  Revert "phy dp83867: Make rgmii parameters optional"
  r8169: default to 64-bit DMA on recent PCIe chips
  phy dp83867: Make rgmii parameters optional
  phy dp83867: Fix compilation with CONFIG_OF_MDIO=m
  bpf: arm64: remove callee-save registers use for tmp registers
  asix: Fix offset calculation in asix_rx_fixup() causing slow transmissions
  switchdev: pass pointer to fib_info instead of copy
  net_sched: close another race condition in tcf_mirred_release()
  tipc: fix nametable publication field in nl compat
  drivers: net: Don't print unpopulated net_device name
  qed: add support for dcbx.
  ravb: Add missing free_irq() calls to ravb_close()
  qed: Remove a stray tab
  net: ethernet: fec-mpc52xx: use phy_ethtool_{get|set}_link_ksettings
  net: ethernet: fec-mpc52xx: use phydev from struct net_device
  bpf, doc: fix typo on bpf_asm descriptions
  stmmac: hardware TX COE doesn't work when force_thresh_dma_mode is set
  net: ethernet: fs-enet: use phy_ethtool_{get|set}_link_ksettings
  net: ethernet: fs-enet: use phydev from struct net_device
  ...
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Pull networking updates from David Miller:
 "Highlights:

   1) Support SPI based w5100 devices, from Akinobu Mita.

   2) Partial Segmentation Offload, from Alexander Duyck.

   3) Add GMAC4 support to stmmac driver, from Alexandre TORGUE.

   4) Allow cls_flower stats offload, from Amir Vadai.

   5) Implement bpf blinding, from Daniel Borkmann.

   6) Optimize _ASYNC_ bit twiddling on sockets, unless the socket is
      actually using FASYNC these atomics are superfluous.  From Eric
      Dumazet.

   7) Run TCP more preemptibly, also from Eric Dumazet.

   8) Support LED blinking, EEPROM dumps, and rxvlan offloading in mlx5e
      driver, from Gal Pressman.

   9) Allow creating ppp devices via rtnetlink, from Guillaume Nault.

  10) Improve BPF usage documentation, from Jesper Dangaard Brouer.

  11) Support tunneling offloads in qed, from Manish Chopra.

  12) aRFS offloading in mlx5e, from Maor Gottlieb.

  13) Add RFS and RPS support to SCTP protocol, from Marcelo Ricardo
      Leitner.

  14) Add MSG_EOR support to TCP, this allows controlling packet
      coalescing on application record boundaries for more accurate
      socket timestamp sampling.  From Martin KaFai Lau.

  15) Fix alignment of 64-bit netlink attributes across the board, from
      Nicolas Dichtel.

  16) Per-vlan stats in bridging, from Nikolay Aleksandrov.

  17) Several conversions of drivers to ethtool ksettings, from Philippe
      Reynes.

  18) Checksum neutral ILA in ipv6, from Tom Herbert.

  19) Factorize all of the various marvell dsa drivers into one, from
      Vivien Didelot

  20) Add VF support to qed driver, from Yuval Mintz"

* git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next: (1649 commits)
  Revert "phy dp83867: Fix compilation with CONFIG_OF_MDIO=m"
  Revert "phy dp83867: Make rgmii parameters optional"
  r8169: default to 64-bit DMA on recent PCIe chips
  phy dp83867: Make rgmii parameters optional
  phy dp83867: Fix compilation with CONFIG_OF_MDIO=m
  bpf: arm64: remove callee-save registers use for tmp registers
  asix: Fix offset calculation in asix_rx_fixup() causing slow transmissions
  switchdev: pass pointer to fib_info instead of copy
  net_sched: close another race condition in tcf_mirred_release()
  tipc: fix nametable publication field in nl compat
  drivers: net: Don't print unpopulated net_device name
  qed: add support for dcbx.
  ravb: Add missing free_irq() calls to ravb_close()
  qed: Remove a stray tab
  net: ethernet: fec-mpc52xx: use phy_ethtool_{get|set}_link_ksettings
  net: ethernet: fec-mpc52xx: use phydev from struct net_device
  bpf, doc: fix typo on bpf_asm descriptions
  stmmac: hardware TX COE doesn't work when force_thresh_dma_mode is set
  net: ethernet: fs-enet: use phy_ethtool_{get|set}_link_ksettings
  net: ethernet: fs-enet: use phydev from struct net_device
  ...
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>perf core: Separate accounting of contexts and real addresses in a stack trace</title>
<updated>2016-05-17T02:11:53+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo</name>
<email>acme@redhat.com</email>
</author>
<published>2016-05-12T16:06:21+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=c85b03349640b34f3545503c8429fc43005e9a92'/>
<id>c85b03349640b34f3545503c8429fc43005e9a92</id>
<content type='text'>
The perf_sample-&gt;ip_callchain-&gt;nr value includes all the entries in the
ip_callchain-&gt;ip[] array, real addresses and PERF_CONTEXT_{KERNEL,USER,etc},
while what the user expects is that what is in the kernel.perf_event_max_stack
sysctl or in the upcoming per event perf_event_attr.sample_max_stack knob be
honoured in terms of IP addresses in the stack trace.

So allocate a bunch of extra entries for contexts, and do the accounting
via perf_callchain_entry_ctx struct members.

A new sysctl, kernel.perf_event_max_contexts_per_stack is also
introduced for investigating possible bugs in the callchain
implementation by some arch.

Cc: Adrian Hunter &lt;adrian.hunter@intel.com&gt;
Cc: Alexander Shishkin &lt;alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com&gt;
Cc: Alexei Starovoitov &lt;ast@kernel.org&gt;
Cc: Brendan Gregg &lt;brendan.d.gregg@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: David Ahern &lt;dsahern@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Frederic Weisbecker &lt;fweisbec@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: He Kuang &lt;hekuang@huawei.com&gt;
Cc: Jiri Olsa &lt;jolsa@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Masami Hiramatsu &lt;mhiramat@kernel.org&gt;
Cc: Milian Wolff &lt;milian.wolff@kdab.com&gt;
Cc: Namhyung Kim &lt;namhyung@kernel.org&gt;
Cc: Peter Zijlstra &lt;peterz@infradead.org&gt;
Cc: Stephane Eranian &lt;eranian@google.com&gt;
Cc: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
Cc: Vince Weaver &lt;vincent.weaver@maine.edu&gt;
Cc: Wang Nan &lt;wangnan0@huawei.com&gt;
Cc: Zefan Li &lt;lizefan@huawei.com&gt;
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/n/tip-3b4wnqk340c4sg4gwkfdi9yk@git.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo &lt;acme@redhat.com&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
The perf_sample-&gt;ip_callchain-&gt;nr value includes all the entries in the
ip_callchain-&gt;ip[] array, real addresses and PERF_CONTEXT_{KERNEL,USER,etc},
while what the user expects is that what is in the kernel.perf_event_max_stack
sysctl or in the upcoming per event perf_event_attr.sample_max_stack knob be
honoured in terms of IP addresses in the stack trace.

So allocate a bunch of extra entries for contexts, and do the accounting
via perf_callchain_entry_ctx struct members.

A new sysctl, kernel.perf_event_max_contexts_per_stack is also
introduced for investigating possible bugs in the callchain
implementation by some arch.

Cc: Adrian Hunter &lt;adrian.hunter@intel.com&gt;
Cc: Alexander Shishkin &lt;alexander.shishkin@linux.intel.com&gt;
Cc: Alexei Starovoitov &lt;ast@kernel.org&gt;
Cc: Brendan Gregg &lt;brendan.d.gregg@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: David Ahern &lt;dsahern@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: Frederic Weisbecker &lt;fweisbec@gmail.com&gt;
Cc: He Kuang &lt;hekuang@huawei.com&gt;
Cc: Jiri Olsa &lt;jolsa@redhat.com&gt;
Cc: Masami Hiramatsu &lt;mhiramat@kernel.org&gt;
Cc: Milian Wolff &lt;milian.wolff@kdab.com&gt;
Cc: Namhyung Kim &lt;namhyung@kernel.org&gt;
Cc: Peter Zijlstra &lt;peterz@infradead.org&gt;
Cc: Stephane Eranian &lt;eranian@google.com&gt;
Cc: Thomas Gleixner &lt;tglx@linutronix.de&gt;
Cc: Vince Weaver &lt;vincent.weaver@maine.edu&gt;
Cc: Wang Nan &lt;wangnan0@huawei.com&gt;
Cc: Zefan Li &lt;lizefan@huawei.com&gt;
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/n/tip-3b4wnqk340c4sg4gwkfdi9yk@git.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo &lt;acme@redhat.com&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>bpf: add generic constant blinding for use in jits</title>
<updated>2016-05-16T17:49:32+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Daniel Borkmann</name>
<email>daniel@iogearbox.net</email>
</author>
<published>2016-05-13T17:08:32+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=4f3446bb809f20ad56cadf712e6006815ae7a8f9'/>
<id>4f3446bb809f20ad56cadf712e6006815ae7a8f9</id>
<content type='text'>
This work adds a generic facility for use from eBPF JIT compilers
that allows for further hardening of JIT generated images through
blinding constants. In response to the original work on BPF JIT
spraying published by Keegan McAllister [1], most BPF JITs were
changed to make images read-only and start at a randomized offset
in the page, where the rest was filled with trap instructions. We
have this nowadays in x86, arm, arm64 and s390 JIT compilers.
Additionally, later work also made eBPF interpreter images read
only for kernels supporting DEBUG_SET_MODULE_RONX, that is, x86,
arm, arm64 and s390 archs as well currently. This is done by
default for mentioned JITs when JITing is enabled. Furthermore,
we had a generic and configurable constant blinding facility on our
todo for quite some time now to further make spraying harder, and
first implementation since around netconf 2016.

We found that for systems where untrusted users can load cBPF/eBPF
code where JIT is enabled, start offset randomization helps a bit
to make jumps into crafted payload harder, but in case where larger
programs that cross page boundary are injected, we again have some
part of the program opcodes at a page start offset. With improved
guessing and more reliable payload injection, chances can increase
to jump into such payload. Elena Reshetova recently wrote a test
case for it [2, 3]. Moreover, eBPF comes with 64 bit constants, which
can leave some more room for payloads. Note that for all this,
additional bugs in the kernel are still required to make the jump
(and of course to guess right, to not jump into a trap) and naturally
the JIT must be enabled, which is disabled by default.

For helping mitigation, the general idea is to provide an option
bpf_jit_harden that admins can tweak along with bpf_jit_enable, so
that for cases where JIT should be enabled for performance reasons,
the generated image can be further hardened with blinding constants
for unpriviledged users (bpf_jit_harden == 1), with trading off
performance for these, but not for privileged ones. We also added
the option of blinding for all users (bpf_jit_harden == 2), which
is quite helpful for testing f.e. with test_bpf.ko. There are no
further e.g. hardening levels of bpf_jit_harden switch intended,
rationale is to have it dead simple to use as on/off. Since this
functionality would need to be duplicated over and over for JIT
compilers to use, which are already complex enough, we provide a
generic eBPF byte-code level based blinding implementation, which is
then just transparently JITed. JIT compilers need to make only a few
changes to integrate this facility and can be migrated one by one.

This option is for eBPF JITs and will be used in x86, arm64, s390
without too much effort, and soon ppc64 JITs, thus that native eBPF
can be blinded as well as cBPF to eBPF migrations, so that both can
be covered with a single implementation. The rule for JITs is that
bpf_jit_blind_constants() must be called from bpf_int_jit_compile(),
and in case blinding is disabled, we follow normally with JITing the
passed program. In case blinding is enabled and we fail during the
process of blinding itself, we must return with the interpreter.
Similarly, in case the JITing process after the blinding failed, we
return normally to the interpreter with the non-blinded code. Meaning,
interpreter doesn't change in any way and operates on eBPF code as
usual. For doing this pre-JIT blinding step, we need to make use of
a helper/auxiliary register, here BPF_REG_AX. This is strictly internal
to the JIT and not in any way part of the eBPF architecture. Just like
in the same way as JITs internally make use of some helper registers
when emitting code, only that here the helper register is one
abstraction level higher in eBPF bytecode, but nevertheless in JIT
phase. That helper register is needed since f.e. manually written
program can issue loads to all registers of eBPF architecture.

The core concept with the additional register is: blind out all 32
and 64 bit constants by converting BPF_K based instructions into a
small sequence from K_VAL into ((RND ^ K_VAL) ^ RND). Therefore, this
is transformed into: BPF_REG_AX := (RND ^ K_VAL), BPF_REG_AX ^= RND,
and REG &lt;OP&gt; BPF_REG_AX, so actual operation on the target register
is translated from BPF_K into BPF_X one that is operating on
BPF_REG_AX's content. During rewriting phase when blinding, RND is
newly generated via prandom_u32() for each processed instruction.
64 bit loads are split into two 32 bit loads to make translation and
patching not too complex. Only basic thing required by JITs is to
call the helper bpf_jit_blind_constants()/bpf_jit_prog_release_other()
pair, and to map BPF_REG_AX into an unused register.

Small bpf_jit_disasm extract from [2] when applied to x86 JIT:

echo 0 &gt; /proc/sys/net/core/bpf_jit_harden

  ffffffffa034f5e9 + &lt;x&gt;:
  [...]
  39:   mov    $0xa8909090,%eax
  3e:   mov    $0xa8909090,%eax
  43:   mov    $0xa8ff3148,%eax
  48:   mov    $0xa89081b4,%eax
  4d:   mov    $0xa8900bb0,%eax
  52:   mov    $0xa810e0c1,%eax
  57:   mov    $0xa8908eb4,%eax
  5c:   mov    $0xa89020b0,%eax
  [...]

echo 1 &gt; /proc/sys/net/core/bpf_jit_harden

  ffffffffa034f1e5 + &lt;x&gt;:
  [...]
  39:   mov    $0xe1192563,%r10d
  3f:   xor    $0x4989b5f3,%r10d
  46:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  49:   mov    $0xb8296d93,%r10d
  4f:   xor    $0x10b9fd03,%r10d
  56:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  59:   mov    $0x8c381146,%r10d
  5f:   xor    $0x24c7200e,%r10d
  66:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  69:   mov    $0xeb2a830e,%r10d
  6f:   xor    $0x43ba02ba,%r10d
  76:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  79:   mov    $0xd9730af,%r10d
  7f:   xor    $0xa5073b1f,%r10d
  86:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  89:   mov    $0x9a45662b,%r10d
  8f:   xor    $0x325586ea,%r10d
  96:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  [...]

As can be seen, original constants that carry payload are hidden
when enabled, actual operations are transformed from constant-based
to register-based ones, making jumps into constants ineffective.
Above extract/example uses single BPF load instruction over and
over, but of course all instructions with constants are blinded.

Performance wise, JIT with blinding performs a bit slower than just
JIT and faster than interpreter case. This is expected, since we
still get all the performance benefits from JITing and in normal
use-cases not every single instruction needs to be blinded. Summing
up all 296 test cases averaged over multiple runs from test_bpf.ko
suite, interpreter was 55% slower than JIT only and JIT with blinding
was 8% slower than JIT only. Since there are also some extremes in
the test suite, I expect for ordinary workloads that the performance
for the JIT with blinding case is even closer to JIT only case,
f.e. nmap test case from suite has averaged timings in ns 29 (JIT),
35 (+ blinding), and 151 (interpreter).

BPF test suite, seccomp test suite, eBPF sample code and various
bigger networking eBPF programs have been tested with this and were
running fine. For testing purposes, I also adapted interpreter and
redirected blinded eBPF image to interpreter and also here all tests
pass.

  [1] http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2012/11/attacking-hardened-linux-systems-with.html
  [2] https://github.com/01org/jit-spray-poc-for-ksp/
  [3] http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2016/05/03/5

Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann &lt;daniel@iogearbox.net&gt;
Reviewed-by: Elena Reshetova &lt;elena.reshetova@intel.com&gt;
Acked-by: Alexei Starovoitov &lt;ast@kernel.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller &lt;davem@davemloft.net&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
This work adds a generic facility for use from eBPF JIT compilers
that allows for further hardening of JIT generated images through
blinding constants. In response to the original work on BPF JIT
spraying published by Keegan McAllister [1], most BPF JITs were
changed to make images read-only and start at a randomized offset
in the page, where the rest was filled with trap instructions. We
have this nowadays in x86, arm, arm64 and s390 JIT compilers.
Additionally, later work also made eBPF interpreter images read
only for kernels supporting DEBUG_SET_MODULE_RONX, that is, x86,
arm, arm64 and s390 archs as well currently. This is done by
default for mentioned JITs when JITing is enabled. Furthermore,
we had a generic and configurable constant blinding facility on our
todo for quite some time now to further make spraying harder, and
first implementation since around netconf 2016.

We found that for systems where untrusted users can load cBPF/eBPF
code where JIT is enabled, start offset randomization helps a bit
to make jumps into crafted payload harder, but in case where larger
programs that cross page boundary are injected, we again have some
part of the program opcodes at a page start offset. With improved
guessing and more reliable payload injection, chances can increase
to jump into such payload. Elena Reshetova recently wrote a test
case for it [2, 3]. Moreover, eBPF comes with 64 bit constants, which
can leave some more room for payloads. Note that for all this,
additional bugs in the kernel are still required to make the jump
(and of course to guess right, to not jump into a trap) and naturally
the JIT must be enabled, which is disabled by default.

For helping mitigation, the general idea is to provide an option
bpf_jit_harden that admins can tweak along with bpf_jit_enable, so
that for cases where JIT should be enabled for performance reasons,
the generated image can be further hardened with blinding constants
for unpriviledged users (bpf_jit_harden == 1), with trading off
performance for these, but not for privileged ones. We also added
the option of blinding for all users (bpf_jit_harden == 2), which
is quite helpful for testing f.e. with test_bpf.ko. There are no
further e.g. hardening levels of bpf_jit_harden switch intended,
rationale is to have it dead simple to use as on/off. Since this
functionality would need to be duplicated over and over for JIT
compilers to use, which are already complex enough, we provide a
generic eBPF byte-code level based blinding implementation, which is
then just transparently JITed. JIT compilers need to make only a few
changes to integrate this facility and can be migrated one by one.

This option is for eBPF JITs and will be used in x86, arm64, s390
without too much effort, and soon ppc64 JITs, thus that native eBPF
can be blinded as well as cBPF to eBPF migrations, so that both can
be covered with a single implementation. The rule for JITs is that
bpf_jit_blind_constants() must be called from bpf_int_jit_compile(),
and in case blinding is disabled, we follow normally with JITing the
passed program. In case blinding is enabled and we fail during the
process of blinding itself, we must return with the interpreter.
Similarly, in case the JITing process after the blinding failed, we
return normally to the interpreter with the non-blinded code. Meaning,
interpreter doesn't change in any way and operates on eBPF code as
usual. For doing this pre-JIT blinding step, we need to make use of
a helper/auxiliary register, here BPF_REG_AX. This is strictly internal
to the JIT and not in any way part of the eBPF architecture. Just like
in the same way as JITs internally make use of some helper registers
when emitting code, only that here the helper register is one
abstraction level higher in eBPF bytecode, but nevertheless in JIT
phase. That helper register is needed since f.e. manually written
program can issue loads to all registers of eBPF architecture.

The core concept with the additional register is: blind out all 32
and 64 bit constants by converting BPF_K based instructions into a
small sequence from K_VAL into ((RND ^ K_VAL) ^ RND). Therefore, this
is transformed into: BPF_REG_AX := (RND ^ K_VAL), BPF_REG_AX ^= RND,
and REG &lt;OP&gt; BPF_REG_AX, so actual operation on the target register
is translated from BPF_K into BPF_X one that is operating on
BPF_REG_AX's content. During rewriting phase when blinding, RND is
newly generated via prandom_u32() for each processed instruction.
64 bit loads are split into two 32 bit loads to make translation and
patching not too complex. Only basic thing required by JITs is to
call the helper bpf_jit_blind_constants()/bpf_jit_prog_release_other()
pair, and to map BPF_REG_AX into an unused register.

Small bpf_jit_disasm extract from [2] when applied to x86 JIT:

echo 0 &gt; /proc/sys/net/core/bpf_jit_harden

  ffffffffa034f5e9 + &lt;x&gt;:
  [...]
  39:   mov    $0xa8909090,%eax
  3e:   mov    $0xa8909090,%eax
  43:   mov    $0xa8ff3148,%eax
  48:   mov    $0xa89081b4,%eax
  4d:   mov    $0xa8900bb0,%eax
  52:   mov    $0xa810e0c1,%eax
  57:   mov    $0xa8908eb4,%eax
  5c:   mov    $0xa89020b0,%eax
  [...]

echo 1 &gt; /proc/sys/net/core/bpf_jit_harden

  ffffffffa034f1e5 + &lt;x&gt;:
  [...]
  39:   mov    $0xe1192563,%r10d
  3f:   xor    $0x4989b5f3,%r10d
  46:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  49:   mov    $0xb8296d93,%r10d
  4f:   xor    $0x10b9fd03,%r10d
  56:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  59:   mov    $0x8c381146,%r10d
  5f:   xor    $0x24c7200e,%r10d
  66:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  69:   mov    $0xeb2a830e,%r10d
  6f:   xor    $0x43ba02ba,%r10d
  76:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  79:   mov    $0xd9730af,%r10d
  7f:   xor    $0xa5073b1f,%r10d
  86:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  89:   mov    $0x9a45662b,%r10d
  8f:   xor    $0x325586ea,%r10d
  96:   mov    %r10d,%eax
  [...]

As can be seen, original constants that carry payload are hidden
when enabled, actual operations are transformed from constant-based
to register-based ones, making jumps into constants ineffective.
Above extract/example uses single BPF load instruction over and
over, but of course all instructions with constants are blinded.

Performance wise, JIT with blinding performs a bit slower than just
JIT and faster than interpreter case. This is expected, since we
still get all the performance benefits from JITing and in normal
use-cases not every single instruction needs to be blinded. Summing
up all 296 test cases averaged over multiple runs from test_bpf.ko
suite, interpreter was 55% slower than JIT only and JIT with blinding
was 8% slower than JIT only. Since there are also some extremes in
the test suite, I expect for ordinary workloads that the performance
for the JIT with blinding case is even closer to JIT only case,
f.e. nmap test case from suite has averaged timings in ns 29 (JIT),
35 (+ blinding), and 151 (interpreter).

BPF test suite, seccomp test suite, eBPF sample code and various
bigger networking eBPF programs have been tested with this and were
running fine. For testing purposes, I also adapted interpreter and
redirected blinded eBPF image to interpreter and also here all tests
pass.

  [1] http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2012/11/attacking-hardened-linux-systems-with.html
  [2] https://github.com/01org/jit-spray-poc-for-ksp/
  [3] http://www.openwall.com/lists/kernel-hardening/2016/05/03/5

Signed-off-by: Daniel Borkmann &lt;daniel@iogearbox.net&gt;
Reviewed-by: Elena Reshetova &lt;elena.reshetova@intel.com&gt;
Acked-by: Alexei Starovoitov &lt;ast@kernel.org&gt;
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller &lt;davem@davemloft.net&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
<entry>
<title>Merge branch 'perf/urgent' into perf/core, to pick up fixes</title>
<updated>2016-05-11T14:56:38+00:00</updated>
<author>
<name>Ingo Molnar</name>
<email>mingo@kernel.org</email>
</author>
<published>2016-05-11T14:56:38+00:00</published>
<link rel='alternate' type='text/html' href='https://git.tavy.me/linux.git/commit/?id=d2950158d0d7bc376503393ca5f73f6f8d27c56b'/>
<id>d2950158d0d7bc376503393ca5f73f6f8d27c56b</id>
<content type='text'>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@kernel.org&gt;
</content>
<content type='xhtml'>
<div xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'>
<pre>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar &lt;mingo@kernel.org&gt;
</pre>
</div>
</content>
</entry>
</feed>
