Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] caml-stubdom: fix "red zone" bug

[Ian Campbell <Ian.Campbell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, 2010-10-27 at 17:16 +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Patrick Colp writes ("[Xen-devel] [PATCH] caml-stubdom: fix "red zone" bug"):
> > According to the AMD64 ABI, the 128-byte area below %rsp is reserved
> > for scratch space and should not be used by signal, interrupt, or
> > exception handlers. However, Mini-OS does not adhere to this
> > interface. 
> 
> How unpleasant.
> 
> > This patch fixes this issue by passing the -mno-red-zone flag to the
> > ocaml configure script in the stubdom Makefile.
> 
> Perhaps it would be better to make Mini-OS adhere to the specified
> interface ?  But I guess your patch is good in the meantime.

Red-zoning is really only intended to apply for userspace, and the
kernel must take pains to make it so, for example when injecting signals
etc.

A kernel (or anything which runs only in ring 0) generally cannot use
red-zoning on itself because there is no stack switch when taking an
exception/interrupt/etc from ring 0 and so the hardware has already
trashed the red-zone before the software would get to do any
fixup/obeying etc.

Xen compiles itself with -mno-red-zone for exactly this reason.

Ian.



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