Re: Plan for /dev/ioasid RFC v2

[Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>]

On Fri, 11 Jun 2021 22:28:46 -0300
Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@nvidia.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jun 11, 2021 at 01:38:28PM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
> 
> > That's fine for a serial port, but not a device that can do DMA.
> > The entire point of vfio is to try to provide secure, DMA capable
> > userspace drivers.  If we relax enforcement of that isolation we've
> > failed.  
> 
> I don't understand why the IOASID matters at all in this. Can you
> explain? What is the breach of isolation?

I think we're arguing past each other again.  VFIO does not care one
iota how userspace configures IOASID domains for devices.  OTOH, VFIO
must be absolutely obsessed that the devices we're providing userspace
access to are isolated and continue to be isolated for the extent of
that access.  Given that we define that a group is the smallest set of
devices that can be isolated, that means that for a device to be
isolated, the group needs to be isolated.

VFIO currently has a contract with the IOMMU backend that a group is
attached to an IOMMU context (container) and from that point forward,
all devices within that group are known to be isolated.

I'm trying to figure out how a device based interface to the IOASID can
provide that same contract or whether VFIO needs to be able to monitor
the IOASID attachments of the devices in a group to control whether
device access is secure.

As I outlined to Kevin, I think it makes a lot of sense to maintain a
group interface to the IOASID where registering a group signifies a
hand-off of responsibility to the IOASIDfd that it is responsible for
the isolation of those devices.  From there we can determine the value
of exposing VFIO device fds directly and whether any of the VFIO
interfaces for attaching devices to IOASIDs make sense versus switching
to the IOASIDfd at that point.

Otherwise, for a device centric VFIO/IOASID model, I need to understand
exactly when and how VFIO can know that it's safe to provide access to
a device and how the IOASID model guarantees the ongoing safety of that
access, which must encompass the safety relative to the entire group.

For example, is it VFIO's job to BIND every device in the group?  Does
binding the device represent the point at which the IOASID takes
responsibility for the isolation of the device?  If instead it's the
ATTACH of a device that provides the isolation, how is VFIO supposed to
handle device access across a group when one device is DETACH'd by the
user?  If ATTACH is the point where isolation is guaranteed, can a
DETACH occur through the IOASIDfd rather than the VFIOfd?  It seems
like the IOASIDfd is going to need ways to manipulate device:IOASID
mappings outside of VFIO, so again I wonder if we should switch to an
IOASID uAPI at that point rather than using VFIO.  Thanks,

Alex