riscv: cfi: reduce shadow stack size limit from 4GB to 2GB

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Follow the ARM64 GCS (Guarded Control Stack) implementation approach
by reducing the shadow stack size allocation from min(RLIMIT_STACK, 4GB)
to min(RLIMIT_STACK/2, 2GB). See commit 506496bcbb ("arm64/gcs: Ensure
that new threads have a GCS")

Rationale:

1. Shadow stacks only store return addresses (8 bytes per entry), not
   local variables, function parameters, or saved registers. A 2GB
   shadow stack is far more than sufficient for any practical
   application, even with extremely deep recursion. Using half the size
   maintains adequate margin while being more resource-efficient.

2. On memory-constrained systems (e.g., platforms with only 4GB of
   physical memory, which is a common configuration), allocating 4GB
   of virtual address space for shadow stack per process/thread can
   lead to virtual memory allocation failures when the overcommit mode
   is set to OVERCOMMIT_GUESS or OVERCOMMIT_NEVER:
   Error: "__vm_enough_memory: not enough memory for the allocation"

This reduces virtual address space consumption by 50% while maintaining
more than adequate space for return address storage.

Signed-off-by: Zong Li <zong.li@sifive.com>
Link: https://patch.msgid.link/20260428024105.645162-1-zong.li@sifive.com
[pjw@kernel.org: clean up patch description]
Signed-off-by: Paul Walmsley <pjw@kernel.org>

...

This commit is contained in:

Zong Li 2026-04-27 19:41:05 -07:00 • committed by Paul Walmsley

parent 41337097f2

commit 6c7674b5b7

1 changed files with 4 additions and 3 deletions

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arch/riscv/kernel/usercfi.c

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