PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT(2const) — Linux manual page

PR_MPX_ENA...MANAGEMENT(2) System Calls ManualPR_MPX_ENA...MANAGEMENT(2)

NAME

       PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT, PR_MPX_DISABLE_MANAGEMENT - enable or
       disable kernel management of Memory Protection eXtensions (MPX)

LIBRARY

       Standard C library (libc, -lc)

SYNOPSIS

       #include <linux/prctl.h>  /* Definition of PR_* constants */
       #include <sys/prctl.h>

       [[deprecated]] int prctl(PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L);
       [[deprecated]] int prctl(PR_MPX_DISABLE_MANAGEMENT, 0L, 0L, 0L, 0L);

DESCRIPTION

       Enable or disable kernel management of Memory Protection
       eXtensions (MPX) bounds tables.

       MPX is a hardware-assisted mechanism for performing bounds
       checking on pointers.  It consists of a set of registers storing
       bounds information and a set of special instruction prefixes that
       tell the CPU on which instructions it should do bounds
       enforcement.  There is a limited number of these registers and
       when there are more pointers than registers, their contents must
       be "spilled" into a set of tables.  These tables are called
       "bounds tables" and the MPX prctl() operations control whether
       the kernel manages their allocation and freeing.

       When management is enabled, the kernel will take over allocation
       and freeing of the bounds tables.  It does this by trapping the
       #BR exceptions that result at first use of missing bounds tables
       and instead of delivering the exception to user space, it
       allocates the table and populates the bounds directory with the
       location of the new table.  For freeing, the kernel checks to see
       if bounds tables are present for memory which is not allocated,
       and frees them if so.

       Before enabling MPX management using PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT,
       the application must first have allocated a user-space buffer for
       the bounds directory and placed the location of that directory in
       the bndcfgu register.

       These calls fail if the CPU or kernel does not support MPX.
       Kernel support for MPX is enabled via the CONFIG_X86_INTEL_MPX
       configuration option.  You can check whether the CPU supports MPX
       by looking for the mpx CPUID bit, like with the following
       command:

           cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep ' mpx '

       A thread may not switch in or out of long (64-bit) mode while MPX
       is enabled.

       All threads in a process are affected by these calls.

       The child of a fork(2) inherits the state of MPX management.
       During execve(2), MPX management is reset to a state as if
       PR_MPX_DISABLE_MANAGEMENT had been called.

RETURN VALUE

       On success, 0 is returned.  On error, -1 is returned, and errno
       is set to indicate the error.

ERRORS

       ENXIO  The kernel or the CPU does not support MPX management.
              Check that the kernel and processor have MPX support.

STANDARDS

       None.

HISTORY

       Linux 3.19.  Removed in Linux 5.4.  Only on x86.

       Due to a lack of toolchain support, PR_MPX_ENABLE_MANAGEMENT and
       PR_MPX_DISABLE_MANAGEMENT are not supported in Linux 5.4 and
       later.

SEE ALSO

       prctl(2)

       For further information on Intel MPX, see the kernel source file
       Documentation/x86/intel_mpx.txt.

COLOPHON

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Linux man-pages 6.9.1          2024-06-01     PR_MPX_ENA...MANAGEMENT(2)

Pages that refer to this page: prctl(2)

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