No, it is a natural result of an implemention which treats setting the A bit as an abnormal flow (e.g. in microcode as opposed to hardware). On September 29, 2015 7:11:59 PM PDT, ebiederm@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: >"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > >> On 09/29/2015 06:20 PM, Eric W. Biederman wrote: >>> Linus Torvalds <torvalds@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >>> >>>> On Tue, Sep 29, 2015 at 1:35 PM, Andy Lutomirski ><luto@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Does anyone know what happens if you stick a non-accessed segment >in >>>>> the GDT, map the GDT RO, and access it? >>>> >>>> You should get a #PF, as you guess, but go ahead and test it if you >>>> want to make sure. >>> >>> I tested this by accident once when workinng on what has become >known >>> as coreboot. Early in boot with your GDT in a EEPROM switching from >>> real mode to 32bit protected mode causes a write and locks up the >>> machine when the hardware declines the write to the GDT to set the >>> accessed bit. As I recall the write kept being retried and retried >and >>> retried... >>> >>> Setting the access bit in the GDT cleared up the problem and I did >not >>> look back. >>> >>> Way up in 64bit mode something might be different, but I don't know >why >>> cpu designeres would waste the silicon. >>> >> >> This is totally different from a TLB violation. In your case, the >write >> goes through as far as the CPU is concerned, but when the data is >> fetched back, it hasn't changed. A write to a TLB-protected location >> will #PF. > >The key point is that a write is generated when the cpu needs to set >the >access bit. I agree the failure points are different. A TLB fault vs >a >case where the hardware did not accept the write. > >The idea of a cpu reading back data (and not trusting it's cache >coherency controls) to verify the access bit gets set seems mind >boggling. That is slow, stupid, racy and incorrect. Incorrect as the >cpu should not only set the access bit once per segment register load. > >In my case I am pretty certain it was something very weird with the >hardware not acceppting the write and either not acknowledging the bus >transaction or cancelling it. In which case the cpu knew the write had >not made it to the ``memory'' and was trying to cope. > >Eric -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
