@@ -12,7 +12,11 @@ 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 with Permission Overlay Extension (FEAT_S1POE), introduced
+ in Arm v8.8
+x86_64
+======
Pkeys work by dedicating 4 previously Reserved bits in each page table entry to
a "protection key", giving 16 possible keys.
@@ -28,6 +32,21 @@ 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 encod3 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
+overrides flags 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
========
@@ -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;
@@ -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
========
@@ -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, so will not be consistent with
+userspace's value of the register or mprotect.
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 <joey.gouly@arm.com> Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org> Cc: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> --- Documentation/core-api/protection-keys.rst | 38 +++++++++++++++++----- 1 file changed, 30 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)