futex_detect_cmpxchg() checks whether cmpxchg is available by trying it on the NULL pointer and seeing what the error code is (EFAULT vs ENOSYS). This happens with KERNEL_DS set, which is impolite: while the NULL *user* pointer is definitely invalid when there is no user program running, the NULL *kernel* pointer seems more like a programming error than a safe place to do an intentionally-failing access. An upcoming hardening series I'm working on causes the existing code to OOPS, because it considers any failed uaccess with KERNEL_DS to be a sign of a bug. Explicitly set USER_DS to avoid this problem. Cc: linux-s390@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Cc: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@xxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Finn Thain <fthain@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> Cc: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> --- I have a couple questions here: - Is this actually okay on all architectures? That is, are there cases where we'll screw up if we fail a USER_DS access this early? s390 stands out as the obvious special case (where USER_DS is not than just a subset of KERNEL_DS), but s390 opts out. - Why doesn't x86 set HAVE_FUTEX_CMPXCHG? Or do we still support some 32-bit configurations that don't have cmpxchg and don't know about it at compile time? kernel/futex.c | 4 ++++ 1 file changed, 4 insertions(+) diff --git a/kernel/futex.c b/kernel/futex.c index 11fc3bb456d6..16bd3e72602a 100644 --- a/kernel/futex.c +++ b/kernel/futex.c @@ -3593,6 +3593,7 @@ static void __init futex_detect_cmpxchg(void) { #ifndef CONFIG_HAVE_FUTEX_CMPXCHG u32 curval; + mm_segment_t old_seg; /* * This will fail and we want it. Some arch implementations do @@ -3604,8 +3605,11 @@ static void __init futex_detect_cmpxchg(void) * implementation, the non-functional ones will return * -ENOSYS. */ + old_seg = get_fs(); + set_fs(USER_DS); if (cmpxchg_futex_value_locked(&curval, NULL, 0, 0) == -EFAULT) futex_cmpxchg_enabled = 1; + set_fs(old_seg); #endif } -- 2.17.1