Re: [PATCH v13 0/2] arm64: Enable BTI for the executable as well as the interpreter

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Hi,

On 4/20/22 06:57, Mark Brown wrote:
On Wed, Apr 20, 2022 at 10:57:30AM +0100, Catalin Marinas wrote:
On Wed, Apr 20, 2022 at 10:36:13AM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:

Kees, please can you drop this series while Catalin's alternative solution
is under discussion (his Reviewed-by preceded the other patches)?

https://lore.kernel.org/r/20220413134946.2732468-1-catalin.marinas@xxxxxxx

Both series expose new behaviours to userspace and we don't need both.

I agree. Even though the patches have my reviewed-by, I think we should
postpone them until we figure out a better W^X solution that does not
affect BTI (and if we can't, we revisit these patches).

Indeed.  I had been expecting this to follow the pattern of the previous
nine months or so and be mostly ignored for the time being while
Catalin's new series goes forward.  Now that it's applied it might be
worth keeping the first patch still in case someone else needs it but
the second patch can probably wait.

Arguably, the two approaches are complementary but the way this series
turned out is for the BTI on main executable to be default off. I have a
worry that the feature won't get used, so we just carry unnecessary code
in the kernel. Jeremy also found this approach less than ideal:

https://lore.kernel.org/r/59fc8a58-5013-606b-f544-8277cda18e50@xxxxxxx

I'm not sure there was a fundamental concern with the approach there but
rather some pushback on the instance on turning it off by default.

Right, this one seems to have the smallest impact on systemd as it exists today. I would have expected the default to be on, because IMHO this set corrects what at first glance just looks like a small oversight. I find the ABI questions a bit theoretical, given that this should only affect environments that don't exist outside of labs/development orgs at this point (aka systemd services on HW that implements BTI).


The other approach works, and if the systemd folks are on board with it also should solve the underlying problem, but it creates a bit of a compatibility problem with existing containers/etc that might exist today (although running systemd/services in a container is itself a discussion).

So, frankly, I don't see why they aren't complementary. This fixes a bug we have today, the other set creates a generic mechanism for the future.

Thanks,




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