[grsec] Issue with 2.6.24 as Xen domU

[Alessandro Grassi]

Hello,

I'd like to report a bug with 2.6.24+grsec running as Xen domU.

As some of you may have noticed, 2.6.24 includes native support for 
running as domU, and the lastest grsec patch is aware of it.
Though, i'm having a few issues with it..
Let me explain:

When I boot a vanilla 2.6.24 kernel, everything goes ok.
When I boot the very same kernel, with grsec patch (nothing of it is 
enabled, just patch -p1 and make oldconfig with "N" at everything), the 
hypervisor seems to have problems loading the kernel image, saying that 
"Unhandled invalid opcode fault/trap [#6] on VCPU 0 [ec=0000]", with 
subsequent domain_crash_sync
(full crash dump at: 
http://www.prato.linux.it/~mnencia/paste/index.php?id=d0e2255464 ).

After some gdb, it seems like the kernel hangs in function 
xen_start_kernel, declared in arch/x86/xen/enlighten.c, line:


    |       BUG_ON(memcmp(xen_start_info->magic, "xen-3", 5) != 0);
    |



BUG_ON is throwing the ud2a instruction (always unvalid opcode) which 
makes the hypervisor call the domain_crash_sync

Since the previous line ( if(!xen_start_info) return; ) tells us that 
the struct xen_start_info is not empty, but the xen_start_info->magic is 
not "xen-3"
(and to be honest, i don't know how to debug a live kernel to discover 
what's in there), i think that something strange is going on.
Maybe there is some alignment or memory layout issue in some exported 
symbols, because as i've seen from the Xen hypervisor code, the 
structure should be filled correctly.

Does anyone have a clue about what's wrong with him?

Thanks in advance

Alessandro