On Thu, Oct 04, 2018 at 10:03:21AM +0200, Joerg Roedel wrote: > I also triggered this when working in the PTI-x32 code. It always > happens on a 32-bit PAE kernel for me. > > Tracking it down I ended up in (iirc) arch/x86/mm/pageattr.c > function static_protections(): > > /* > * The BIOS area between 640k and 1Mb needs to be executable for > * PCI BIOS based config access (CONFIG_PCI_GOBIOS) support. > */ > #ifdef CONFIG_PCI_BIOS > if (pcibios_enabled && within(pfn, BIOS_BEGIN >> PAGE_SHIFT, BIOS_END >> PAGE_SHIFT)) > pgprot_val(forbidden) |= _PAGE_NX; > #endif > > I think that is the reason we are seeing this in that configuration. So looking at this, BIOS_BEGIN and BIOS_END is the same range as the ISA range: #define ISA_START_ADDRESS 0x000a0000 #define ISA_END_ADDRESS 0x00100000 #define BIOS_BEGIN 0x000a0000 #define BIOS_END 0x00100000 and I did try marking the ISA range RO in mark_rodata_ro() but the machine wouldn't boot after. So I'm guessing BIOS needs to write there some crap. -- Regards/Gruss, Boris. Good mailing practices for 400: avoid top-posting and trim the reply.