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Documentation/protection-keys: add AArch64 to documentation
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As POE support was recently added, update the documentation.

Also note that kernel threads have a default protection key register value.

Signed-off-by: Joey Gouly <[email protected]>
Cc: Will Deacon <[email protected]>
Cc: Catalin Marinas <[email protected]>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <[email protected]>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
[will: Adjusted wording based on feedback from Kevin]
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <[email protected]>
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jgouly authored and willdeacon committed Oct 14, 2024
1 parent e3e8527 commit f56d8d2
Showing 1 changed file with 30 additions and 8 deletions.
38 changes: 30 additions & 8 deletions Documentation/core-api/protection-keys.rst
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -12,7 +12,10 @@ Pkeys Userspace (PKU) is a feature which can be found on:
* Intel server CPUs, Skylake and later
* Intel client CPUs, Tiger Lake (11th Gen Core) and later
* Future AMD CPUs
* arm64 CPUs implementing the Permission Overlay Extension (FEAT_S1POE)

x86_64
======
Pkeys work by dedicating 4 previously Reserved bits in each page table entry to
a "protection key", giving 16 possible keys.

Expand All @@ -28,6 +31,22 @@ register. The feature is only available in 64-bit mode, even though there is
theoretically space in the PAE PTEs. These permissions are enforced on data
access only and have no effect on instruction fetches.

arm64
=====

Pkeys use 3 bits in each page table entry, to encode a "protection key index",
giving 8 possible keys.

Protections for each key are defined with a per-CPU user-writable system
register (POR_EL0). This is a 64-bit register encoding read, write and execute
overlay permissions for each protection key index.

Being a CPU register, POR_EL0 is inherently thread-local, potentially giving
each thread a different set of protections from every other thread.

Unlike x86_64, the protection key permissions also apply to instruction
fetches.

Syscalls
========

Expand All @@ -38,11 +57,10 @@ There are 3 system calls which directly interact with pkeys::
int pkey_mprotect(unsigned long start, size_t len,
unsigned long prot, int pkey);

Before a pkey can be used, it must first be allocated with
pkey_alloc(). An application calls the WRPKRU instruction
directly in order to change access permissions to memory covered
with a key. In this example WRPKRU is wrapped by a C function
called pkey_set().
Before a pkey can be used, it must first be allocated with pkey_alloc(). An
application writes to the architecture specific CPU register directly in order
to change access permissions to memory covered with a key. In this example
this is wrapped by a C function called pkey_set().
::

int real_prot = PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE;
Expand All @@ -64,9 +82,9 @@ is no longer in use::
munmap(ptr, PAGE_SIZE);
pkey_free(pkey);

.. note:: pkey_set() is a wrapper for the RDPKRU and WRPKRU instructions.
An example implementation can be found in
tools/testing/selftests/x86/protection_keys.c.
.. note:: pkey_set() is a wrapper around writing to the CPU register.
Example implementations can be found in
tools/testing/selftests/mm/pkey-{arm64,powerpc,x86}.h

Behavior
========
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -96,3 +114,7 @@ with a read()::
The kernel will send a SIGSEGV in both cases, but si_code will be set
to SEGV_PKERR when violating protection keys versus SEGV_ACCERR when
the plain mprotect() permissions are violated.

Note that kernel accesses from a kthread (such as io_uring) will use a default
value for the protection key register and so will not be consistent with
userspace's value of the register or mprotect().

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