smp: every stack on every AP was misaligned by eight

`jmp mpenter`.

x86-64 requires rsp to be 16-byte aligned immediately before a `call`, so a
function starts with rsp ending in 8 -- the return address -- and its
`push %rbp; mov %rsp,%rbp` prologue leaves %rbp 16-byte aligned. Compilers
build on that: an aligned vector store to a frame slot is `movaps`, and
`movaps` to a misaligned address is #GP.

entry64mp loaded the AP's stack pointer, which is page-aligned, and *jumped*.
Nothing pushed a return address, so %rbp came out eight bytes off -- on every
frame, on every application processor, for the life of the machine.

It cost nothing for as long as no function an AP ran needed an aligned vector
store. Then the console's glyph path started returning a small struct by value
(the cell-as-a-surface change), clang spilled it with movaps, and CPU 1 took a
#GP the instant it announced itself on a verbose boot:

    unexpected trap 13 from cpu 1 rip ffff800000120a3b <draw_glyph_px+0x1cb>

    120a37: 0f 10 45 90    movups -0x70(%rbp), %xmm0
    120a3b: 0f 29 45 b0    movaps %xmm0, -0x50(%rbp)   <- #GP

movups on the line above loads fine; movaps stores and faults. The
displacement is a multiple of 16, so what is misaligned is %rbp itself, which
is a fact about how the function was entered.

`call mpenter`, not `jmp`. Eight bytes for an ABI the whole toolchain assumes.

**It was hiding behind a second bug.** The first report was not a #GP at all:

    Stop code     ACQUIRE
          #2  cprintf+0xae
          #3  trap+0x2c4

trap() reported the fault with cprintf(), cprintf() takes the console lock,
and the faulting code was already holding it -- on a verbose boot every
character is drawn under that lock. acquire() panicked about a lock its own
call chain owned, and the trap number, the faulting address and the registers
were all lost. A kernel-mode trap ends in panic() a dozen lines later anyway,
so the console goes into panic mode *before* the report rather than during it.

**And a third, in the same boot.** The console reported "JetBrains Mono, 8x16
cells" -- a name from one font and metrics from another. The built-in bitmap
became a provider like any other in the previous commit, so draw_glyph_px()
installs it lazily on the first glyph; on a verbose boot that happens before
gfx_font_init() runs, which then returned early because a font was already
installed. The console spent the whole boot in the fallback while claiming not
to be. "A font is installed" and "a typeface was chosen" had been the same test
and quietly stopped being; they are two flags now.

Verified: verbose boot reaches a shell twice running with no traps and no
panics, and reports 10x21 cells -- the real typeface -- where it reported 8x16
before. Both supported configurations quiet: one boot each, no traps, no
panics, socktest and memfdtest green.

Written up as section 22 of docs/history/kernel.md, because the interesting
part is not the missing eight bytes but that three separate faults had to be
peeled off in order before the first one could be seen.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
Nexoniarz 2026-09-23 19:37:35 +02:00
commit 26e5d89c73
4 changed files with 120 additions and 3 deletions

View file

@ -1125,3 +1125,73 @@ and startup is 0.14 s. mksh keeps `/bin/sh`, so schinit's no-jobs fallback is a
different program from the one that might have failed. different program from the one that might have failed.
Completion is the piece that waits on the filesystem. Completion is the piece that waits on the filesystem.
## 22. Every stack on every application processor was misaligned by eight
`jmp mpenter`.
x86-64 requires `rsp` to be 16-byte aligned immediately before a `call`, so a
function begins with `rsp` ending in 8 — the return address — and its
`push %rbp; mov %rsp,%rbp` prologue leaves `%rbp` 16-byte aligned. Compilers
build on that: an aligned vector store to a frame slot is `movaps`, and
`movaps` to a misaligned address is `#GP`.
`entry64mp` loaded the AP's stack pointer, which is page-aligned, and *jumped*.
No return address was pushed, so `%rbp` came out eight bytes off — on every
frame, on every application processor, for the life of the machine.
It cost nothing for as long as no function an AP ran needed an aligned vector
store. Then the console's glyph path started returning a small struct by value,
clang spilled it with `movaps`, and CPU 1 took a `#GP` the instant it announced
itself:
```
unexpected trap 13 from cpu 1 rip ffff800000120a3b <draw_glyph_px+0x1cb>
```
```
ffff800000120a37: 0f 10 45 90 movups -0x70(%rbp), %xmm0
ffff800000120a3b: 0f 29 45 b0 movaps %xmm0, -0x50(%rbp) <- #GP
```
`movups` — *unaligned* — loads fine on the line above; `movaps` stores and
faults. The displacement is a multiple of 16, so the misalignment is `%rbp`
itself, which is a fact about how the function was entered rather than
anything it did.
`call mpenter` instead of `jmp`. Eight bytes for an ABI the whole toolchain
assumes.
### It hid behind a second bug
The first report of this was not a `#GP`, it was:
```
Stop code ACQUIRE
#2 cprintf+0xae
#3 trap+0x2c4
```
`trap()` reported the fault with `cprintf()`, `cprintf()` takes the console
lock, and the faulting code was already holding it — every character drawn on
a verbose boot is drawn under that lock. So `acquire()` panicked about a lock
its own call chain owned, and the trap number, the faulting address and the
register state were all lost.
A kernel-mode trap ends in `panic()` a dozen lines later regardless, so the
console is put into panic mode *before* the report rather than during it. The
same fault then prints what it actually was, which is the entire purpose of
the report.
### And a third, in the same boot
The console reported `JetBrains Mono, 8x16 cells` — a name from one font and
metrics from another. The built-in bitmap had become a provider like any other,
so `draw_glyph_px()` installed it lazily on the first glyph; on a verbose boot
that happens before `gfx_font_init()` runs, and `gfx_font_init()` returned early
because a font was already installed. The console spent the whole boot in the
fallback while claiming not to be.
"A font is installed" and "a typeface was chosen" had been the same test
(`cfont == 0`) and quietly stopped being. They are two flags now, and
`gfx_font_ready()` answers the second one.

View file

@ -233,7 +233,26 @@ __deadloop:
entry64mp: entry64mp:
mov $0x7000, %rax mov $0x7000, %rax
mov -16(%rax), %rsp mov -16(%rax), %rsp
jmp mpenter
# `call`, not `jmp`, and the difference is an ABI requirement rather than a
# style preference.
#
# x86-64 says rsp is 16-byte aligned immediately before a `call`, so a
# function starts with rsp ending in 8 -- the return address the call just
# pushed -- and its `push %rbp; mov %rsp,%rbp` prologue therefore leaves
# %rbp 16-byte aligned. Compilers rely on that: an aligned SSE store to a
# frame slot is `movaps`, and `movaps` to a misaligned address is #GP.
#
# This was a `jmp` into a 16-byte-aligned stack, so every frame on every
# application processor was off by eight, for the life of the machine. It
# cost nothing for as long as no function the APs ran happened to need an
# aligned vector store -- and then one did, deep in the console, and CPU 1
# took a #GP the moment it announced itself on a verbose boot.
#
# mpenter never returns, so the pushed address is only ever a backtrace
# entry. Eight bytes for an ABI the whole toolchain assumes is a bargain.
call mpenter
jmp __deadloop
.global wrmsr .global wrmsr
wrmsr: wrmsr:

View file

@ -148,6 +148,18 @@ trap(struct trapframe *tf)
unexpected: unexpected:
if(myproc() == 0 || (tf->cs&3) == 0){ if(myproc() == 0 || (tf->cs&3) == 0){
// A kernel-mode trap ends in panic() a dozen lines down, so the console
// can be put into its panic mode *now* -- and it has to be, because the
// fault may have happened inside the console itself.
//
// cprintf() takes cons.lock. If the faulting code was already holding
// it -- anything under console output, which on a verbose boot is most
// of the kernel -- then this report deadlocks on a lock its own call
// chain owns, acquire() panics with "acquire", and the trap that
// actually happened is never printed. That is a bad trade at the best
// of times and a worse one here: the whole point of the report is to
// name the fault.
cons_panic_mode();
// The rip is named where it can be. This is a kernel address, so // The rip is named where it can be. This is a kernel address, so
// ksym_lookup() has something to say about it -- and the whole reason // ksym_lookup() has something to say about it -- and the whole reason
// docs/architecture/debugging.md puts D0 first is that "rip ffff8000001294c2" // docs/architecture/debugging.md puts D0 first is that "rip ffff8000001294c2"

View file

@ -61,6 +61,17 @@ static int cell_h = BITMAP_H;
// The typeface. Null only until the first glyph is drawn, which fills it in // The typeface. Null only until the first glyph is drawn, which fills it in
// with the built-in bitmap; gfx_font_init() replaces that with a real face // with the built-in bitmap; gfx_font_init() replaces that with a real face
// when there is one. // when there is one.
// Whether the font in `cfont` is the built-in bitmap standing in, or a real
// typeface that was chosen.
//
// The distinction was implicit in `cfont == 0` until the built-in became a
// provider like any other, and losing it cost a boot: draw_glyph_px() installs
// the fallback lazily, a verbose boot draws before gfx_font_init() runs, and
// gfx_font_init() then saw a font already installed and returned without
// loading anything. The console stayed 8x16 for the whole boot while reporting
// itself as JetBrains Mono.
static int cfont_is_builtin;
static struct ttf consttf; static struct ttf consttf;
static struct font *cfont; static struct font *cfont;
static int cfont_baseline; static int cfont_baseline;
@ -318,6 +329,7 @@ draw_glyph_px(int x, int y, uint32 cp, uint32 fg, uint32 bg)
if (!cfont) { if (!cfont) {
cfont = font_builtin(); cfont = font_builtin();
cfont_baseline = cfont->ops->baseline(cfont); cfont_baseline = cfont->ops->baseline(cfont);
cfont_is_builtin = 1;
} }
// Background first. A terminal cell owns its rectangle, and leaving the old // Background first. A terminal cell owns its rectangle, and leaving the old
@ -366,7 +378,10 @@ gfx_font_init(void)
uint32 len = (uint32)(_binary_consfont_end - _binary_consfont_start); uint32 len = (uint32)(_binary_consfont_end - _binary_consfont_start);
struct glyph gl; struct glyph gl;
if (cfont) // A built-in font standing in is not a font having been chosen. Returning
// here on that basis is what kept the bitmap on screen for an entire
// verbose boot.
if (cfont && !cfont_is_builtin)
return; return;
// A typeface off the boot volume, if the loader found one. // A typeface off the boot volume, if the loader found one.
@ -430,6 +445,7 @@ gfx_font_init(void)
cell_h = h; cell_h = h;
cfont_baseline = f->ops->baseline(f); cfont_baseline = f->ops->baseline(f);
cfont = f; cfont = f;
cfont_is_builtin = 0;
} }
// **Nothing here prints.** gfx_font_init() runs before vt_init(), because // **Nothing here prints.** gfx_font_init() runs before vt_init(), because
@ -443,7 +459,7 @@ gfx_font_init(void)
int int
gfx_font_ready(void) gfx_font_ready(void)
{ {
return cfont != 0; return cfont != 0 && !cfont_is_builtin;
} }
void void