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linux-next/Documentation/x86/protection-keys.txt
Dave Hansen 591b1d8d86 x86/mm/pkeys: Add missing Documentation
Stefan Richter noticed that the X86_INTEL_MEMORY_PROTECTION_KEYS option
in arch/x86/Kconfig references Documentation/x86/protection-keys.txt,
but the file does not exist.

This is a patch merging mishap: the final (v8) version of the pkeys
series did not include the documentation patch 32 and v7 included.
Add it now.

Reported-by: Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
Signed-off-by: Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Brian Gerst <brgerst@gmail.com>
Cc: Dave Hansen <dave@sr71.net>
Cc: Denys Vlasenko <dvlasenk@redhat.com>
Cc: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: linux-mm@kvack.org
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/20151214190634.426BEE41@viggo.jf.intel.com
[ Added changelog. ]
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>

Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
2016-03-29 11:21:17 +02:00

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Memory Protection Keys for Userspace (PKU aka PKEYs) is a CPU feature
which will be found on future Intel CPUs.
Memory Protection Keys provides a mechanism for enforcing page-based
protections, but without requiring modification of the page tables
when an application changes protection domains. It works by
dedicating 4 previously ignored bits in each page table entry to a
"protection key", giving 16 possible keys.
There is also a new user-accessible register (PKRU) with two separate
bits (Access Disable and Write Disable) for each key. Being a CPU
register, PKRU is inherently thread-local, potentially giving each
thread a different set of protections from every other thread.
There are two new instructions (RDPKRU/WRPKRU) for reading and writing
to the new 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.
=========================== Config Option ===========================
This config option adds approximately 1.5kb of text. and 50 bytes of
data to the executable. A workload which does large O_DIRECT reads
of holes in XFS files was run to exercise get_user_pages_fast(). No
performance delta was observed with the config option
enabled or disabled.