System calls in the Linux kernel. Part 3.

vsyscalls and vDSO

This is the third part of the chapter that describes system calls in the Linux kernel and we saw preparations after a system call caused by a userspace application and process of handling of a system call in the previous part. In this part we will look at two concepts that are very close to the system call concept, they are called vsyscall and vdso.

We already know what system calls are. They are special routines in the Linux kernel which userspace applications ask to do privileged tasks, like to read or to write to a file, to open a socket, etc. As you may know, invoking a system call is an expensive operation in the Linux kernel, because the processor must interrupt the currently executing task and switch context to kernel mode, subsequently jumping again into userspace after the system call handler finishes its work. These two mechanisms - vsyscall and vdso are designed to speed up this process for certain system calls and in this part we will try to understand how these mechanisms work.

Introduction to vsyscalls

The vsyscall or virtual system call is the first and oldest mechanism in the Linux kernel that is designed to accelerate execution of certain system calls. The principle of work of the vsyscall concept is simple. The Linux kernel maps into user space a page that contains some variables and the implementation of some system calls. We can find information about this memory space in the Linux kernel documentation for the x86_64:

ffffffffff600000 - ffffffffffdfffff (=8 MB) vsyscalls

or:

~$ sudo cat /proc/1/maps | grep vsyscall
ffffffffff600000-ffffffffff601000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0                  [vsyscall]

After this, these system calls will be executed in userspace and this means that there will not be context switching. Mapping of the vsyscall page occurs in the map_vsyscall function that is defined in the arch/x86/entry/vsyscall/vsyscall_64.c source code file. This function is called during the Linux kernel initialization in the setup_arch function that is defined in the arch/x86/kernel/setup.c source code file (we saw this function in the fifth part of the Linux kernel initialization process chapter).

Note that implementation of the map_vsyscall function depends on the CONFIG_X86_VSYSCALL_EMULATION kernel configuration option:

#ifdef CONFIG_X86_VSYSCALL_EMULATION
extern void map_vsyscall(void);
#else
static inline void map_vsyscall(void) {}
#endif

As we can read in the help text, the CONFIG_X86_VSYSCALL_EMULATION configuration option: Enable vsyscall emulation. Why emulate vsyscall? Actually, the vsyscall is a legacy ABI due to security reasons. Virtual system calls have fixed addresses, meaning that vsyscall page is still at the same location every time and the location of this page is determined in the map_vsyscall function. Let's look on the implementation of this function:

void __init map_vsyscall(void)
{
    extern char __vsyscall_page;
    unsigned long physaddr_vsyscall = __pa_symbol(&__vsyscall_page);
	...
	...
	...
}

As we can see, at the beginning of the map_vsyscall function we get the physical address of the vsyscall page with the __pa_symbol macro (we already saw implementation if this macro in the fourth path of the Linux kernel initialization process). The __vsyscall_page symbol defined in the arch/x86/entry/vsyscall/vsyscall_emu_64.S assembly source code file and have the following virtual address:

ffffffff81881000 D __vsyscall_page

in the .data..page_aligned, aw section and contains call of the three following system calls:

gettimeofday;
time;
getcpu.

Or:

__vsyscall_page:
	mov $__NR_gettimeofday, %rax
	syscall
	ret

	.balign 1024, 0xcc
	mov $__NR_time, %rax
	syscall
	ret

	.balign 1024, 0xcc
	mov $__NR_getcpu, %rax
	syscall
	ret

Let's go back to the implementation of the map_vsyscall function and return to the implementation of the __vsyscall_page later. After we received the physical address of the __vsyscall_page, we check the value of the vsyscall_mode variable and set the fix-mapped address for the vsyscall page with the __set_fixmap macro:

if (vsyscall_mode != NONE)
	__set_fixmap(VSYSCALL_PAGE, physaddr_vsyscall,
                 vsyscall_mode == NATIVE
                             ? PAGE_KERNEL_VSYSCALL
                             : PAGE_KERNEL_VVAR);

The __set_fixmap takes three arguments: The first is index of the fixed_addresses enum. In our case VSYSCALL_PAGE is the first element of the fixed_addresses enum for the x86_64 architecture:

enum fixed_addresses {
...
...
...
#ifdef CONFIG_X86_VSYSCALL_EMULATION
	VSYSCALL_PAGE = (FIXADDR_TOP - VSYSCALL_ADDR) >> PAGE_SHIFT,
#endif
...
...
...

It equal to the 511. The second argument is the physical address of the page that has to be mapped and the third argument is the flags of the page. Note that the flags of the VSYSCALL_PAGE depend on the vsyscall_mode variable. It will be PAGE_KERNEL_VSYSCALL if the vsyscall_mode variable is NATIVE and the PAGE_KERNEL_VVAR otherwise. Both macros (the PAGE_KERNEL_VSYSCALL and the PAGE_KERNEL_VVAR) will be expanded to the following flags:

#define __PAGE_KERNEL_VSYSCALL          (__PAGE_KERNEL_RX | _PAGE_USER)
#define __PAGE_KERNEL_VVAR              (__PAGE_KERNEL_RO | _PAGE_USER)

that represent access rights to the vsyscall page. Both flags have the same _PAGE_USER flags that means that the page can be accessed by a user-mode process running at lower privilege levels. The second flag depends on the value of the vsyscall_mode variable. The first flag (__PAGE_KERNEL_VSYSCALL) will be set in the case where vsyscall_mode is NATIVE. This means virtual system calls will be native syscall instructions. In other way the vsyscall will have PAGE_KERNEL_VVAR if the vsyscall_mode variable will be emulate. In this case virtual system calls will be turned into traps and are emulated reasonably. The vsyscall_mode variable gets its value in the vsyscall_setup function:

static int __init vsyscall_setup(char *str)
{
	if (str) {
		if (!strcmp("emulate", str))
			vsyscall_mode = EMULATE;
		else if (!strcmp("native", str))
			vsyscall_mode = NATIVE;
		else if (!strcmp("none", str))
			vsyscall_mode = NONE;
		else
			return -EINVAL;

		return 0;
	}

	return -EINVAL;
}

That will be called during early kernel parameters parsing:

early_param("vsyscall", vsyscall_setup);

More about early_param macro you can read in the sixth part of the chapter that describes process of the initialization of the Linux kernel.

In the end of the vsyscall_map function we just check that virtual address of the vsyscall page is equal to the value of the VSYSCALL_ADDR with the BUILD_BUG_ON macro:

BUILD_BUG_ON((unsigned long)__fix_to_virt(VSYSCALL_PAGE) !=
             (unsigned long)VSYSCALL_ADDR);

That's all. vsyscall page is set up. The result of the all the above is the following: If we pass vsyscall=native parameter to the kernel command line, virtual system calls will be handled as native syscall instructions in the arch/x86/entry/vsyscall/vsyscall_emu_64.S. The glibc knows addresses of the virtual system call handlers. Note that virtual system call handlers are aligned by 1024 (or 0x400) bytes:

__vsyscall_page:
	mov $__NR_gettimeofday, %rax
	syscall
	ret

	.balign 1024, 0xcc
	mov $__NR_time, %rax
	syscall
	ret

	.balign 1024, 0xcc
	mov $__NR_getcpu, %rax
	syscall
	ret

And the start address of the vsyscall page is the ffffffffff600000 every time. So, the glibc knows the addresses of the all virtual system call handlers. You can find definition of these addresses in the glibc source code:

#define VSYSCALL_ADDR_vgettimeofday   0xffffffffff600000
#define VSYSCALL_ADDR_vtime 	      0xffffffffff600400
#define VSYSCALL_ADDR_vgetcpu	      0xffffffffff600800

All virtual system call requests will fall into the __vsyscall_page + VSYSCALL_ADDR_vsyscall_name offset, put the number of a virtual system call to the rax general purpose register and the native for the x86_64 syscall instruction will be executed.

In the second case, if we pass vsyscall=emulate parameter to the kernel command line, an attempt to perform virtual system call handler will cause a page fault exception. Of course, remember, the vsyscall page has __PAGE_KERNEL_VVAR access rights that forbid execution. The do_page_fault function is the #PF or page fault handler. It tries to understand the reason of the last page fault. And one of the reason can be situation when virtual system call called and vsyscall mode is emulate. In this case vsyscall will be handled by the emulate_vsyscall function that defined in the arch/x86/entry/vsyscall/vsyscall_64.c source code file.

The emulate_vsyscall function gets the number of a virtual system call, checks it, prints error and sends segmentation fault simply:

...
...
...
vsyscall_nr = addr_to_vsyscall_nr(address);
if (vsyscall_nr < 0) {
	warn_bad_vsyscall(KERN_WARNING, regs, "misaligned vsyscall...);
	goto sigsegv;
}
...
...
...
sigsegv:
	force_sig(SIGSEGV, current);
	return true;

As it checked number of a virtual system call, it does some yet another checks like access_ok violations and execute system call function depends on the number of a virtual system call:

switch (vsyscall_nr) {
	case 0:
		ret = sys_gettimeofday(
			(struct timeval __user *)regs->di,
			(struct timezone __user *)regs->si);
		break;
	...
	...
	...
}

In the end we put the result of the sys_gettimeofday or another virtual system call handler to the ax general purpose register, as we did it with the normal system calls and restore the instruction pointer register and add 8 bytes to the stack pointer register. This operation emulates ret instruction.

	regs->ax = ret;

do_ret:
	regs->ip = caller;
	regs->sp += 8;
	return true;

That's all. Now let's look on the modern concept - vDSO.

Introduction to vDSO

As I already wrote above, vsyscall is an obsolete concept and replaced by the vDSO or virtual dynamic shared object. The main difference between the vsyscall and vDSO mechanisms is that vDSO maps memory pages into each process in a shared object form, but vsyscall is static in memory and has the same address every time. For the x86_64 architecture it is called -linux-vdso.so.1. All userspace applications that dynamically link to glibc will use the vDSO automatically. For example:

~$ ldd /bin/uname
	linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007ffe014b7000)
	libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007fbfee2fe000)
	/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00005559aab7c000)

Or:

~$ sudo cat /proc/1/maps | grep vdso
7fff39f73000-7fff39f75000 r-xp 00000000 00:00 0       [vdso]

Here we can see that uname util was linked with the three libraries:

linux-vdso.so.1;
libc.so.6;
ld-linux-x86-64.so.2.

The first provides vDSO functionality, the second is C standard library and the third is the program interpreter (more about this you can read in the part that describes linkers). So, the vDSO solves limitations of the vsyscall. Implementation of the vDSO is similar to vsyscall.

Initialization of the vDSO occurs in the init_vdso function that defined in the arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c source code file. This function starts from the initialization of the vDSO images for 32-bits and 64-bits depends on the CONFIG_X86_X32_ABI kernel configuration option:

static int __init init_vdso(void)
{
	init_vdso_image(&vdso_image_64);

#ifdef CONFIG_X86_X32_ABI
	init_vdso_image(&vdso_image_x32);
#endif

Both functions initialize the vdso_image structure. This structure is defined in the two generated source code files: the arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso-image-64.c and the arch/x86/entry/vdso/vdso-image-32.c. These source code files generated by the vdso2c program from the different source code files, represent different approaches to call a system call like int 0x80, sysenter, etc. The full set of the images depends on the kernel configuration.

For example for the x86_64 Linux kernel it will contain vdso_image_64:

#ifdef CONFIG_X86_64
extern const struct vdso_image vdso_image_64;
#endif

But for the x86 - vdso_image_32:

#ifdef CONFIG_X86_X32
extern const struct vdso_image vdso_image_x32;
#endif

If our kernel is configured for the x86 architecture or for the x86_64 and compatibility mode, we will have ability to call a system call with the int 0x80 interrupt, if compatibility mode is enabled, we will be able to call a system call with the native syscall instruction or sysenter instruction in other way:

#if defined CONFIG_X86_32 || defined CONFIG_COMPAT
  extern const struct vdso_image vdso_image_32_int80;
#ifdef CONFIG_COMPAT
  extern const struct vdso_image vdso_image_32_syscall;
#endif
 extern const struct vdso_image vdso_image_32_sysenter;
#endif

As we can understand from the name of the vdso_image structure, it represents image of the vDSO for the certain mode of the system call entry. This structure contains information about size in bytes of the vDSO area that's always a multiple of PAGE_SIZE (4096 bytes), pointer to the text mapping, start and end address of the alternatives (set of instructions with better alternatives for the certain type of the processor), etc. For example vdso_image_64 looks like this:

const struct vdso_image vdso_image_64 = {
	.data = raw_data,
	.size = 8192,
	.text_mapping = {
		.name = "[vdso]",
		.pages = pages,
	},
	.alt = 3145,
	.alt_len = 26,
	.sym_vvar_start = -8192,
	.sym_vvar_page = -8192,
	.sym_hpet_page = -4096,
};

Where the raw_data contains raw binary code of the 64-bit vDSO system calls which are 2 page size:

static struct page *pages[2];

or 8 Kilobytes.

The init_vdso_image function is defined in the same source code file and just initializes the vdso_image.text_mapping.pages. First of all this function calculates the number of pages and initializes each vdso_image.text_mapping.pages[number_of_page] with the virt_to_page macro that converts given address to the page structure:

void __init init_vdso_image(const struct vdso_image *image)
{
	int i;
	int npages = (image->size) / PAGE_SIZE;

	for (i = 0; i < npages; i++)
		image->text_mapping.pages[i] =
			virt_to_page(image->data + i*PAGE_SIZE);
	...
	...
	...
}

The init_vdso function passed to the subsys_initcall macro adds the given function to the initcalls list. All functions from this list will be called in the do_initcalls function from the init/main.c source code file:

subsys_initcall(init_vdso);

Ok, we just saw initialization of the vDSO and initialization of page structures that are related to the memory pages that contain vDSO system calls. But to where do their pages map? Actually they are mapped by the kernel, when it loads binary to the memory. The Linux kernel calls the arch_setup_additional_pages function from the arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c source code file that checks that vDSO enabled for the x86_64 and calls the map_vdso function:

int arch_setup_additional_pages(struct linux_binprm *bprm, int uses_interp)
{
	if (!vdso64_enabled)
		return 0;

	return map_vdso(&vdso_image_64, true);
}

The map_vdso function is defined in the same source code file and maps pages for the vDSO and for the shared vDSO variables. That's all. The main differences between the vsyscall and the vDSO concepts is that vsyscall has a static address of ffffffffff600000 and implements three system calls, whereas the vDSO loads dynamically and implements five system calls, as defined in arch/x86/entry/vdso/vma.c:

__vdso_clock_gettime;
__vdso_getcpu;
__vdso_gettimeofday;
__vdso_time;
__vdso_clock_getres.

That's all.

Conclusion

This is the end of the third part about the system calls concept in the Linux kernel. In the previous part we discussed the implementation of the preparation from the Linux kernel side, before a system call will be handled and implementation of the exit process from a system call handler. In this part we continued to dive into the stuff which is related to the system call concept and learned two new concepts that are very similar to the system call - the vsyscall and the vDSO.

After all of these three parts, we know almost all things that are related to system calls, we know what system call is and why user applications need them. We also know what occurs when a user application calls a system call and how the kernel handles system calls.

The next part will be the last part in this chapter and we will see what occurs when a user runs the program.

If you have questions or suggestions, feel free to ping me in twitter 0xAX, drop me email or just create issue.

Please note that English is not my first language and I am really sorry for any inconvenience. If you found any mistakes please send me PR to linux-insides.

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System calls in the Linux kernel. Part 3.

vsyscalls and vDSO

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System calls in the Linux kernel. Part 3.

vsyscalls and vDSO

Introduction to vsyscalls

Introduction to vDSO

Conclusion

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