• mcgrathr@chromium.org's avatar
    Use chain-loading for Linux nacl_helper · 12274721
    mcgrathr@chromium.org authored
    This replaces the nacl_helper_bootstrap program, dynamically-linked against
    nacl_helper.so, with a standalone, statically-linked nacl_helper_bootstrap
    program that loads the dynamic linker, instructing it in turn to load the
    nacl_helper program (now a PIE rather than a DSO).
    
    This avoids two problems with the old scheme:
    1. The nacl_helper_bootstrap program remained in the dynamic linker's
       list of loaded objects, as the main executable, even though the
       memory where its .dynamic section had been was overwritten with
       the NaCl untrusted address space.  Code that traverses the list of
       all loaded objects could thus attempt to look at pointers into this
       part of memory, and be led astray.
    2. nacl_helper_bootstrap's large (~1G) bss segment could cause the kernel
       to refuse to load the program because it didn't think there was enough
       free memory in the system for so large an allocation of anonymous memory.
    
    The bootstrap program is kept very small by avoiding all use of libc
    (except for memset and integer division routines needed on ARM).  It has
    its own custom start-up code hand-written in assembly and its own custom
    system call stubs done with hand-written GCC inline asm statements.
    
    To avoid the second problem, the bootstrap program no longer has a large
    bss.  Instead, it has a special ELF segment (i.e. PT_LOAD header) that
    specifies no memory access, and a large (~1G) mapping size from the file.
    This mapping is way off the end of the file, but the kernel doesn't mind
    that, and since it's all a file mapping, the kernel does not do its normal
    memory accounting for consuming a large amount of anonymous memory.
    
    Unfortunately, it's impossible to get the linker to produce exactly the
    right PT_LOAD header by itself.  Using a custom linker script, we get the
    layout exactly how we want it and a PT_LOAD header that is almost right.
    We then use a build-time helper program to munge one field of the PT_LOAD
    to make it exactly what we need.
    
    BUG= http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=94147
    TEST= hand-tested chromium build, invoked with --nacl-linux-helper
    
    R=bradchen@google.com,mseaborn@chromium.org
    
    
    Review URL: http://codereview.chromium.org/7795010
    
    git-svn-id: svn://svn.chromium.org/chrome/trunk/src@98909 0039d316-1c4b-4281-b951-d872f2087c98
    12274721
nacl_helper_bootstrap_linux.x 3.01 KB