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Global pages are bad for hardening because they potentially let an
exploit read the kernel image via a Meltdown-style attack which
makes it easier to find gadgets.
But, global pages are good for performance because they reduce TLB
misses when making user/kernel transitions, especially when PCIDs
are not available, such as on older hardware, or where a hypervisor
has disabled them for some reason.
This patch implements a basic, sane policy: If you have PCIDs, you
only map a minimal amount of kernel text global. If you do not have
PCIDs, you map all kernel text global.
This policy effectively makes PCIDs something that not only adds
performance but a little bit of hardening as well.
I ran a simple "lseek" microbenchmark[1] to test the benefit on
a modern Atom microserver. Most of the benefit comes from applying
the series before this patch ("entry only"), but there is still a
signifiant benefit from this patch.
No Global Lines (baseline ): 6077741 lseeks/sec
88 Global Lines (entry only): 7528609 lseeks/sec (+23.9%)
94 Global Lines (this patch): 8433111 lseeks/sec (+38.8%)
[1.] https://github.com/antonblanchard/will-it-scale/blob/master/tests/lseek1.c
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@redhat.com>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
Cc: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@redhat.com>
Cc: Juergen Gross <jgross@suse.com>
Cc: Kees Cook <keescook@google.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Nadav Amit <namit@vmware.com>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20180406205518.E3D989EB@viggo.jf.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Linux kernel ============ This file was moved to Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst Please notice that there are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or ``make pdfdocs``. There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory, several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation. See Documentation/00-INDEX for a list of what is contained in each file. Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.