Re: [LPC] pkeys ABI

On 17/06/2026 15:06, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Wed, 2026-06-17 at 14:57 +0200, Kevin Brodsky wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I am considering submitting a Refereed presentation proposal for LPC,
>> but I would first like to check if it makes sense to everyone in
>> To/Cc.
>>
>> The pkeys ABI is heavily underspecified when it comes to asynchronous
>> kernel interactions, such as signal delivery [1], rseq [2], io_uring
>> worker threads, etc. Depending on the situation, we might reset the
>> pkey register to "allow all", or "allow acess to pkey 0 only", or use
>> the interrupted context's register (even though it is arguably
>> unrelated). It isn't always consistent across architectures either. 
>>
>> As Thomas put it, "that's all broken". LPC feels like the right
>> occasion to summarise where we are, and explore potential solutions.
>> Unfortunately this topic isn't an obvious fit for any MC, so a
>> Refereed presentation seems like the least bad option.
> That's not necessarily true, especially if you want a group discussion.
> If all of your attendees are going to plumbers anyway you might
> consider a BoF ... or possibly a workshop like the Nova GPU people did
> last year if you need more than an hour.  The downside of BoF or
> Workshop is that you have to run your own A/V connections (we'll have
> at least USB speaker/Mic's to provide you at reception and might have
> one of the owl camera things)

Right, a BoF session would indeed be a good fit (1h should be more than
enough). According to [3] the Refereed track also accepts BoFs so I
suppose that it's the right place to make the submission regardless?

- Kevin

[3] https://lpc.events/event/20/abstracts/