The alt_max_short() macro in asm/alternative.h does not work as
intended, leading to nasty bugs. E.g. alt_max_short("1", "3")
evaluates to 3, but alt_max_short("3", "1") evaluates to 1 -- not
exactly the maximum of 1 and 3.
In fact, I had to learn it the hard way by crashing my kernel in not
so funny ways by attempting to make use of the ALTENATIVE_2 macro
with alternatives where the first one was larger than the second
one.
According to [1] and commit dbe4058a6a ("x86/alternatives: Fix
ALTERNATIVE_2 padding generation properly") the right handed side
should read "-(-(a < b))" not "-(-(a - b))". Fix that, to make the
macro work as intended.
While at it, fix up the comments regarding the additional "-", too.
It's not about gas' usage of s32 but brain dead logic of having a
"true" value of -1 for the < operator ... *sigh*
Btw., the one in asm/alternative-asm.h is correct. And, apparently,
all current users of ALTERNATIVE_2() pass same sized alternatives,
avoiding to hit the bug.
[1] http://graphics.stanford.edu/~seander/bithacks.html#IntegerMinOrMax
Reviewed-and-tested-by: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Fixes: dbe4058a6a ("x86/alternatives: Fix ALTERNATIVE_2 padding generation properly")
Signed-off-by: Mathias Krause <minipli@googlemail.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@suse.de>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/1507228213-13095-1-git-send-email-minipli@googlemail.com
6b32c126d3