[Ksummit-discuss] 2038 Kernel Summit Discussion Fodder

H. Peter Anvin hpa at zytor.com
Sat Sep 19 00:04:22 UTC 2015


On 08/13/2014 01:06 PM, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Wednesday 13 August 2014 03:06:53 Ben Hutchings wrote:
>>> On the kernel side, it also adds more complexity, where we have to add
>>> even more complex compat support for 64bit systems to handle all the
>>> various 32bit applications possible.
>> [...]
>>
>> Didn't we need to do this already to support x32?  Have compat ioctls
>> involving time been botched?
> 
> AFAICT, every ioctl that involves passing a __kernel_ulong_t or
> __kernel_ulong_t is potentially broken on x32, and this includes
> everything passing a time_t or timespec.
> 
> The problem is that the libc ioctl() function ends up in the kernel's
> compat_ioctl handler, which expects the 32-bit ABI, not the 64-bit ABI.
> Most other syscalls in x32 however use the 64-bit ABI.
> 
> It works only for drivers that use the same function for .ioctl and
> .compat_ioctl, and that encode the size of the data structure correctly
> in the ioctl command code. I assume this is how we will do it for all
> 32-bit architectures with 64-bit time_t, but on x32 it also concerns
> other types that use __kernel_long_t.
> 

OK, super-late reply.

Actually we have by and large dealt with that.  Sadly this meant an
increase in the number of paths with conditional ABI.

	-hpa




More information about the Ksummit-discuss mailing list