ARM: 7791/1: a.out: remove partial a.out support

a.out support on ARM requires that argc, argv and envp are passed in
r0-r2 respectively, which requires hacking load_aout_binary to
prevent argc being clobbered by the return code. Whilst mainline kernels
do set the registers up in start_thread, the aout loader has never
carried the hack in mainline.

Initialising the registers in this way actually goes against the libc
expectations for ELF binaries, where argc, argv and envp are passed on
the stack, with r0 being used to hold a pointer to an exit function for
cleaning up after the dynamic linker if required. If the pointer is
NULL, then it is ignored. When execing an ELF binary, Linux currently
zeroes r0, then sets it to argc and then finally clobbers it with the
return value of the execve syscall, so we actually end up with:

	r0 = 0
	stack[0] = argc
	r1 = stack[1] = argv
	r2 = stack[2] = envp

libc treats r1 and r2 as undefined. The clobbering of r0 by sys_execve
works for user-spawned threads, but when executing an ELF binary from a
kernel thread (via call_usermodehelper), the execve is performed on the
ret_from_fork path, which restores r0 from the saved pt_regs, resulting
in argc being presented to the C library. This has horrible consequences
when the application exits, since we have an exit function registered
using argc, resulting in a jump to hyperspace.

This patch solves the problem by removing the partial a.out support from
arch/arm/ altogether.

Cc: <stable@vger.kernel.org>
Cc: Ashish Sangwan <ashishsangwan2@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <will.deacon@arm.com>
Signed-off-by: Russell King <rmk+kernel@arm.linux.org.uk>

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 1 deletions

diff --git a/arch/arm/Kconfig b/arch/arm/Kconfig
index ba412e0..82f06982 100644
--- a/arch/arm/Kconfig
+++ b/arch/arm/Kconfig
@@ -20,7 +20,6 @@ config ARM
 	select GENERIC_STRNCPY_FROM_USER
 	select GENERIC_STRNLEN_USER
 	select HARDIRQS_SW_RESEND
-	select HAVE_AOUT
 	select HAVE_ARCH_JUMP_LABEL if !XIP_KERNEL
 	select HAVE_ARCH_KGDB
 	select HAVE_ARCH_SECCOMP_FILTER