x86: fix vsyscall wreckage
based on a report from Arne Georg Gleditsch about user-space apps
misbehaving after toggling /proc/sys/kernel/vsyscall64, a review
of the code revealed that the "NOP patching" done there is
fundamentally unsafe for a number of reasons:
1) the patching code runs without synchronizing other CPUs
2) it inserts NOPs even if there is no clock source which provides vread
3) when the clock source changes to one without vread we run in
exactly the same problem as in #2
4) if nobody toggles the proc entry from 1 to 0 and to 1 again, then
the syscall is not patched out
as a result it is possible to break user-space via this patching.
The only safe thing for now is to remove the patching.
This code was broken since v2.6.21.
Reported-by: Arne Georg Gleditsch <arne.gleditsch@dolphinics.no>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@elte.hu>
1 file changed