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Re: [PATCH RFC] explicit_bzero, again



On 20-08-2015 23:49, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 20, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Adhemerval Zanella
> <adhemerval.zanella@linaro.org> wrote:
>>
>> As Joseph I also support the principle of adding this new API.
> 
> I am pleased to hear that.
> 
>> Regarding the
>> patch some comments below.  It would be better if you send it as inline instead
>> of attachment, and send on message for each patch.
> 
> Regrettably, this is not a thing I can do - I have tried several mail
> clients and they all mangle patches if I put them inline.

You can easily with thunderbird (I use it) with some configurations.

> 
>>> +  typedef struct {char __x[__n];} __memblk;
>>> +  memset (__s, 0, __n);
>>> +  __asm__ ("" : : "m" (*(__memblk __attribute__ ((__may_alias__)) *)__s));
>>
>> I noted that Linux kernel uses the following definition:
>>
>> #define barrier_data(ptr) __asm__ __volatile__("": :"r"(ptr) :"memory")
> 
> This is a much more aggressive optimization barrier than is necessary.
> A "memory" clobber tells the compiler that it can assume _nothing_
> about what the asm statement does to memory -- so it has to discard
> _all_ its knowledge of what's in memory where.  For explicit_bzero we
> don't need to invalidate _anything_ - we just need to tell the
> compiler that certain stores may not be eliminated even though they
> appear to be dead.  When we can't do that precisely, leaving
> explicit_bzero as an out-of-line function call should be more
> efficient than a whole-memory clobber.
> 
> I intend to start a conversation with the GCC and LLVM people about
> adding an intrinsic that does exactly what is needed in this context,
> but I do not think that should hold up the patch.
> 
> (I am not qualified to speculate on whether the kernel is also being
> too aggressive; they might be using this for completely different
> stuff.)

Right, but this way you are proposing limits this API to only C programs
and only for GNU compilers.  Using kernel way to use the whole-memory 
clobber avoids the '__memblk' (and thus compiles for C++ as well) and also 
guarantees it works on other C compilers (clang).

> 
>> Do we want to 'chk' version being use even for non-check?
> 
> I do not understand this sentence.

My mistake here.

> 
>> Also I see that OpenBSD added a patch to try disable this option for LTO [1].
>> Do you think could it be worth to add as well in your version?
> 
> I could be wrong about this, but I am fairly sure that neither GCC nor
> LLVM is capable of LTO-optimizing through a call to a shared library,
> therefore this additional complication should not be necessary.

I agree, I was only curious if you know the background about this change.

> 
> zw
> 


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