[PATCH] x86: make IOPL explicit

The pushf/popf in switch_to are ONLY used to switch IOPL.  Making this
explicit in C code is more clear.  This pushf/popf pair was added as a
bugfix for leaking IOPL to unprivileged processes when using
sysenter/sysexit based system calls (sysexit does not restore flags).

When requesting an IOPL change in sys_iopl(), it is just as easy to change
the current flags and the flags in the stack image (in case an IRET is
required), but there is no reason to force an IRET if we came in from the
SYSENTER path.

This change is the minimal solution for supporting a paravirtualized Linux
kernel that allows user processes to run with I/O privilege.  Other
solutions require radical rewrites of part of the low level fault / system
call handling code, or do not fully support sysenter based system calls.

Unfortunately, this added one field to the thread_struct.  But as a bonus,
on P4, the fastest time measured for switch_to() went from 312 to 260
cycles, a win of about 17% in the fast case through this performance
critical path.

Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden <zach@vmware.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/arch/i386/kernel/process.c b/arch/i386/kernel/process.c
index 660997800393..b45cbf93d439 100644
--- a/arch/i386/kernel/process.c
+++ b/arch/i386/kernel/process.c
@@ -712,6 +712,12 @@ struct task_struct fastcall * __switch_to(struct task_struct *prev_p, struct tas
                 loadsegment(gs, next->gs);
 
         /*
+         * Restore IOPL if needed.
+         */
+        if (unlikely(prev->iopl != next->iopl))
+                set_iopl_mask(next->iopl);
+
+        /*
          * Now maybe reload the debug registers
          */
         if (unlikely(next->debugreg[7])) {