amd64_set_gsbase()
Jung-uk Kim
jkim at FreeBSD.org
Mon Oct 8 15:41:44 PDT 2007
On Monday 08 October 2007 06:00 pm, Mihai Donțu wrote:
> On Monday 08 October 2007, Jung-uk Kim wrote:
> > Yes, you are correct. A short version is "don't do that". A
> > long version goes like this. %fs and %gs are not preserved while
> > context switching on amd64.
>
> But this makes emulation software such as Wine a lost hope, doesn't
> it? Because Windows apps access the Thread Information Block (TIB)
> via %gs (%fs on ia32).
It was discussed many times on freebsd-emulation at .
> Anyway, my so called "small" program is actually a Win64 emulator
> and I need the segment selector to "stay put" across syscalls. It
> works like a charm on single threaded apps, but as soon as I spawn
> a thread, all hell breaks loose :)
Yup, that's expected. ;-)
> I've managed to come up with something that *kind of* works. It
> goes like this:
>
> void my_handler( int s )
> {
> if ( s == SIGSEGV ) {
> if ( get_gs() == 0 ) {
> amd64_set_gsbase();
> } else {
> signal( SIGSEGV, SIG_DFL );
> }
> }
> }
>
> int my_init( void )
> {
> /* alloc TIB memory and initialize */
>
> amd64_set_gsbase( lpTIB );
> signal( SIGSEGV, my_handler );
>
> return 0;
> }
>
> but after a series of dlopen()-s, my_handler() is called without
> %gs being zero and without a valid fault (the handler does not get
> recalled after signal( SIGSEGV, SIG_DFL ). I'm still working on
> this aspect ...
That does not work, i.e., %gs vs. base address mapping is not
preserved on FreeBSD/amd64 as I said. You can probably maintain some
mapping table, though.
> > In fact, you should not use amd64_set_gsbase()
> > directly. If you *really* have to mess up with base addresses,
> > you have to use sysarch(2) syscall, i.e.,
> > sysarch(AMD64_SET_GSBASE, args).
>
> I found this: /usr/src/lib/libc/amd64/sys/amd64_set_gsbase.c:32
> "
> int
> amd64_set_gsbase(void *addr)
> {
> return (sysarch(AMD64_SET_GSBASE, &addr));
> }
> "
>
> and this (man 2 sysarch()): "The sysarch() system call should never
> be called directly by user programs. Instead, they should access
> its functions using the architecture-dependent library."
>
> Who am I suppose to believe? :)
Sorry, my bad. :-(
> > However, it only changes the base address via MSR, i.e., %gs
> > itself has no meaning.
>
> Maybe, but the selector loaded in %gs *does* have meaning.
In long mode, we don't really care about segment registers. While
implementing TLS for Linuxulator, I had to do the following hack, for
example:
http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200703300006.l2U06LA1075891
Under Linux and Windows, they do preserve segment registers vs. base
addresses mapping for backward compatibility, AFAIK with some
performance penalty.
Jung-uk Kim
> Anyway, the thing is I _have_ to make this work. I'll keep you
> posted ;)
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