Re: [PATCH v4 01/12] mm/shmem: Introduce F_SEAL_INACCESSIBLE

From: Andy Lutomirski <luto@kernel.org>
To: Chao Peng <chao.p.peng@linux.intel.com>,
	kvm@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-mm@kvack.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org,
	qemu-devel@nongnu.org, Linux API <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>
Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
	Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>,
	Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>,
	Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@redhat.com>,
	Wanpeng Li <wanpengli@tencent.com>,
	Jim Mattson <jmattson@google.com>, Joerg Roedel <joro@8bytes.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
	x86@kernel.org, "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
	Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>, Jeff Layton <jlayton@kernel.org>,
	"J . Bruce Fields" <bfields@fieldses.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Yu Zhang <yu.c.zhang@linux.intel.com>,
	"Kirill A . Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>,
	jun.nakajima@intel.com, dave.hansen@intel.com,
	ak@linux.intel.com, david@redhat.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 01/12] mm/shmem: Introduce F_SEAL_INACCESSIBLE
Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2022 15:33:35 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <619547ad-de96-1be9-036b-a7b4e99b09a6@kernel.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20220118132121.31388-2-chao.p.peng@linux.intel.com>

On 1/18/22 05:21, Chao Peng wrote:
> From: "Kirill A. Shutemov" <kirill.shutemov@linux.intel.com>
> 
> Introduce a new seal F_SEAL_INACCESSIBLE indicating the content of
> the file is inaccessible from userspace through ordinary MMU access
> (e.g., read/write/mmap). However, the file content can be accessed
> via a different mechanism (e.g. KVM MMU) indirectly.
> 
> It provides semantics required for KVM guest private memory support
> that a file descriptor with this seal set is going to be used as the
> source of guest memory in confidential computing environments such
> as Intel TDX/AMD SEV but may not be accessible from host userspace.
> 
> At this time only shmem implements this seal.
> 

I don't dislike this *that* much, but I do dislike this. 
F_SEAL_INACCESSIBLE essentially transmutes a memfd into a different type 
of object.  While this can apparently be done successfully and without 
races (as in this code), it's at least awkward.  I think that either 
creating a special inaccessible memfd should be a single operation that 
create the correct type of object or there should be a clear 
justification for why it's a two-step process.

(Imagine if the way to create an eventfd would be to call 
timerfd_create() and then do a special fcntl to turn it into an eventfd 
but only if it's not currently armed.  This would be weird.)