On Fri, Sep 30, 2022 at 9:16 PM Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 9/29/22 15:29, Rick Edgecombe wrote: > > @@ -1633,6 +1633,9 @@ static inline bool __pte_access_permitted(unsigned long pteval, bool write) > > { > > unsigned long need_pte_bits = _PAGE_PRESENT|_PAGE_USER; > > > > + if (write && (pteval & (_PAGE_RW | _PAGE_DIRTY)) == _PAGE_DIRTY) > > + return 0; > > Do we not have a helper for this? Seems a bit messy to open-code these > shadow-stack permissions. Definitely at least needs a comment. FWIW, if you look at more context around this diff, the function looks like this: static inline bool __pte_access_permitted(unsigned long pteval, bool write) { unsigned long need_pte_bits = _PAGE_PRESENT|_PAGE_USER; + if (write && (pteval & (_PAGE_RW | _PAGE_DIRTY)) == _PAGE_DIRTY) + return 0; + if (write) need_pte_bits |= _PAGE_RW; if ((pteval & need_pte_bits) != need_pte_bits) return 0; return __pkru_allows_pkey(pte_flags_pkey(pteval), write); } So I think this change is actually a no-op - the only thing it does is to return 0 if write==1, !_PAGE_RW, and _PAGE_DIRTY. But the check below will always return 0 if !_PAGE_RW, unless I'm misreading it? And this is the only patch in the series that touches this function, so it's not like this becomes necessary with a later patch in the series either. Should this check go in anyway for clarity reasons, or should this instead be a comment explaining that __pte_access_permitted() behaves just like the hardware access check, which means shadow pages are treated as readonly?