[PATCH] x86: document sysenter path

This path isn't obvious.  It looks as if the kernel will be taking three
args from the user stack, but it only takes one from there.

Signed-off-by: Albert Cahalan <acahalan@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 15 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S b/arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S
index 4daefb2ec1b2..76b728159403 100644
--- a/arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S
+++ b/arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S
@@ -7,6 +7,21 @@
  *    for details.
  */
 
+/*
+ * The caller puts arg2 in %ecx, which gets pushed. The kernel will use
+ * %ecx itself for arg2. The pushing is because the sysexit instruction
+ * (found in entry.S) requires that we clobber %ecx with the desired %esp.
+ * User code might expect that %ecx is unclobbered though, as it would be
+ * for returning via the iret instruction, so we must push and pop.
+ *
+ * The caller puts arg3 in %edx, which the sysexit instruction requires
+ * for %eip. Thus, exactly as for arg2, we must push and pop.
+ *
+ * Arg6 is different. The caller puts arg6 in %ebp. Since the sysenter
+ * instruction clobbers %esp, the user's %esp won't even survive entry
+ * into the kernel. We store %esp in %ebp. Code in entry.S must fetch
+ * arg6 from the stack.
+ */
         .text
         .globl __kernel_vsyscall
         .type __kernel_vsyscall,@function