[PATCH] x86: privilege cleanup
Privilege checking cleanup. Originally, these diffs were much greater, but
recent cleanups in Linux have already done much of the cleanup. I added
some explanatory comments in places where the reasoning behind certain
tests is rather subtle.
Also, in traps.c, we can skip the user_mode check in handle_BUG(). The
reason is, there are only two call chains - one via die_if_kernel() and one
via do_page_fault(), both entering from die(). Both of these paths already
ensure that a kernel mode failure has happened. Also, the original check
here, if (user_mode(regs)) was insufficient anyways, since it would not
rule out BUG faults from V8086 mode execution.
Saving the %ss segment in show_regs() rather than assuming a fixed value
also gives better information about the current kernel state in the
register dump.
Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
diff --git a/include/asm-i386/ptrace.h b/include/asm-i386/ptrace.h
index 0553287..7e0f294 100644
--- a/include/asm-i386/ptrace.h
+++ b/include/asm-i386/ptrace.h
@@ -61,6 +61,13 @@
struct task_struct;
extern void send_sigtrap(struct task_struct *tsk, struct pt_regs *regs, int error_code);
+/*
+ * user_mode_vm(regs) determines whether a register set came from user mode.
+ * This is true if V8086 mode was enabled OR if the register set was from
+ * protected mode with RPL-3 CS value. This tricky test checks that with
+ * one comparison. Many places in the kernel can bypass this full check
+ * if they have already ruled out V8086 mode, so user_mode(regs) can be used.
+ */
static inline int user_mode(struct pt_regs *regs)
{
return (regs->xcs & 3) != 0;