Re: [PATCH 1/4] arm64/gcs: release GCS on failed fork

[Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>]

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On Fri, Oct 16, 2026 at 04:46:00PM -0300, Iván Ezequiel Rodriguez wrote:

> Select HAVE_EXIT_THREAD and free the child's GCS from
> exit_thread(). gcs_free() already ignores a cleared base and a
> different mm, so the usual exit path (deactivate_mm() then this) is
> a no-op the second time. copy_thread_gcs() zeros the inherited
> tracking before a user-thread allocation, so an allocation error
> still skips exit_thread() with nothing to unmap.

This makes sense and mirrors the handling on x86 which had an existing
exit_thread().  There was a lot of pain finding the right places to hook
in here, there's far too many routes through this code :/ .

> A kthread copies the caller's GCS fields via arch_dup_task_struct().
> kernel_thread() uses CLONE_VM, so during a failed copy_process()
> the child still shares the caller's mm and gcs_free()'s mm check
> does not save us. Clear the inherited tracking as part of kthread
> setup.

I'm not spotting an equivalent path on x86, it's entirely possible I'm
missing something here but if I'm not then I expect they need the same
fix?  They use a similar memcpy() for the arch data and I'm not seeing a
reset anywhere.

> @@ -503,6 +513,17 @@ int copy_thread(struct task_struct *p, const struct kernel_clone_args *args)
>  
>  		p->thread.cpu_context.x19 = (unsigned long)args->fn;
>  		p->thread.cpu_context.x20 = (unsigned long)args->fn_arg;
> +#ifdef CONFIG_ARM64_GCS
> +		/*
> +		 * kernel_thread() uses CLONE_VM, so a failed
> +		 * copy_process() still shares the caller's mm.
> +		 * Inherited GCS tracking would then look like a
> +		 * child mapping to gcs_free().
> +		 */
> +		p->thread.gcs_base = 0;
> +		p->thread.gcs_size = 0;
> +		p->thread.gcspr_el0 = 0;
> +#endif

I think it'd be a bit more idiomatic to have a function to reset the GCS
state that gets an empty stub with !CONFIG_GCS 

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