If a machine check happens, the machine has the vector facility installed
and the extended save area exists, the cpu will save vector register
contents into the extended save area. This is regardless of control
register 0 contents, which enables and disables the vector facility during
runtime.
On each machine check we should validate the vector registers. The current
code however tries to validate the registers only if the running task is
using vector registers in user space.
However even the current code is broken and causes vector register
corruption on machine checks, if user space uses them:
the prefix area contains a pointer (absolute address) to the machine check
extended save area. In order to save some space the save area was put into
an unused area of the second prefix page.
When validating vector register contents the code uses the absolute address
of the extended save area, which is wrong. Due to prefixing the vector
instructions will then access contents using absolute addresses instead
of real addresses, where the machine stored the contents.
If the above would work there is still the problem that register validition
would only happen if user space uses vector registers. If kernel space uses
them also, this may also lead to vector register content corruption:
if the kernel makes use of vector instructions, but the current running
user space context does not, the machine check handler will validate
floating point registers instead of vector registers.
Given the fact that writing to a floating point register may change the
upper halve of the corresponding vector register, we also experience vector
register corruption in this case.
Fix all of these issues, and always validate vector registers on each
machine check, if the machine has the vector facility installed and the
extended save area is defined.
Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org> # 4.1+
Signed-off-by: Heiko Carstens <heiko.carstens@de.ibm.com>
Signed-off-by: Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>
cad49cfc44