x86/mm: Comment _PAGE_GLOBAL mystery
authorDave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Fri, 6 Apr 2018 20:55:13 +0000 (13:55 -0700)
committerIngo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
Thu, 12 Apr 2018 07:05:58 +0000 (09:05 +0200)
commit430d4005b8b41c19966dd3bfdb33004bdb2de01c
tree0c24ef41097badc4e85ce4d61d4fe2fd5af7a621
parent1a54420aeb4da1ba5b28283aa5696898220c9a27
x86/mm: Comment _PAGE_GLOBAL mystery

I was mystified as to where the _PAGE_GLOBAL in the kernel page tables
for kernel text came from.  I audited all the places I could find, but
I missed one: head_64.S.

The page tables that we create in here live for a long time, and they
also have _PAGE_GLOBAL set, despite whether the processor supports it
or not.  It's harmless, and we got *lucky* that the pageattr code
accidentally clears it when we wipe it out of __supported_pte_mask and
then later try to mark kernel text read-only.

Comment some of these properties to make it easier to find and
understand in the future.

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/20180406205513.079BB265@viggo.jf.intel.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
arch/x86/kernel/head_64.S