diff options
| author | Albert D. Cahalan <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> | 2006-02-14 13:53:20 -0800 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org> | 2006-02-14 16:09:35 -0800 |
| commit | 581141cb4b10ebd865dcb7b80f5e712e2def5408 (patch) | |
| tree | cd9c6e4ac3c53196586f1246439e417410b90a4f /arch/i386 | |
| parent | 28baebae73c3ea8b75c7cae225a7db817ab825a9 (diff) | |
[PATCH] x86: document sysenter path
This path isn't obvious. It looks as if the kernel will be taking three
args from the user stack, but it only takes one from there.
Signed-off-by: Albert Cahalan <acahalan@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'arch/i386')
| -rw-r--r-- | arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S | 15 |
1 files changed, 15 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S b/arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S index 4daefb2ec1b2..76b728159403 100644 --- a/arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S +++ b/arch/i386/kernel/vsyscall-sysenter.S @@ -7,6 +7,21 @@ * for details. */ +/* + * The caller puts arg2 in %ecx, which gets pushed. The kernel will use + * %ecx itself for arg2. The pushing is because the sysexit instruction + * (found in entry.S) requires that we clobber %ecx with the desired %esp. + * User code might expect that %ecx is unclobbered though, as it would be + * for returning via the iret instruction, so we must push and pop. + * + * The caller puts arg3 in %edx, which the sysexit instruction requires + * for %eip. Thus, exactly as for arg2, we must push and pop. + * + * Arg6 is different. The caller puts arg6 in %ebp. Since the sysenter + * instruction clobbers %esp, the user's %esp won't even survive entry + * into the kernel. We store %esp in %ebp. Code in entry.S must fetch + * arg6 from the stack. + */ .text .globl __kernel_vsyscall .type __kernel_vsyscall,@function |