From: Sean Christopherson <sean.j.christopherson@intel.com>
To: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Cc: Maxim Levitsky <mlevitsk@redhat.com>,
kvm@vger.kernel.org,
"maintainer:X86 ARCHITECTURE (32-BIT AND 64-BIT)"
<x86@kernel.org>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Joerg Roedel <joro@8bytes.org>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
Wanpeng Li <wanpengli@tencent.com>,
"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@redhat.com>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>, Jim Mattson <jmattson@google.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] kvm: x86: rewrite kvm_spec_ctrl_valid_bits
Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2020 01:26:24 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20200707082624.GB7417@linux.intel.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <e5da32da-6cb2-85b1-a12b-da796843d2bb@redhat.com>
On Tue, Jul 07, 2020 at 10:17:14AM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 07/07/20 10:14, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> >>> One oddity with this whole thing is that by passing through the MSR, KVM is
> >>> allowing the guest to write bits it doesn't know about, which is definitely
> >>> not normal. It also means the guest could write bits that the host VMM
> >>> can't.
> >> That's true. However, the main purpose of the kvm_spec_ctrl_valid_bits
> >> check is to ensure that host-initiated writes are valid; this way, you
> >> don't get a #GP on the next vmentry's WRMSR to MSR_IA32_SPEC_CTRL.
> >> Checking the guest CPUID bit is not even necessary.
> > Right, what I'm saying is that rather than try and decipher specs to
> > determine what bits are supported, just throw the value at hardware and
> > go from there. That's effectively what we end up doing for the guest writes
> > anyways.
>
> Yes, it would prevent the #GP.
>
> > Actually, the current behavior will break migration if there are ever legal
> > bits that KVM doesn't recognize, e.g. guest writes a value that KVM doesn't
> > allow and then migration fails when the destination tries to stuff the value
> > into KVM.
>
> Yes, unfortunately migration would also be broken if the target (and the
> guest CPUID) is an older CPU. But that's not something we can fix
> without trapping all writes which would be unacceptably slow.
Ah, true, the guest would need to be setting bits that weren't enumerated
to it.
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2020-07-07 8:26 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 15+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2020-07-02 17:44 [PATCH] kvm: x86: rewrite kvm_spec_ctrl_valid_bits Maxim Levitsky
2020-07-02 18:16 ` Sean Christopherson
2020-07-05 9:40 ` Maxim Levitsky
2020-07-07 6:11 ` Sean Christopherson
2020-07-07 8:04 ` Paolo Bonzini
2020-07-07 8:14 ` Sean Christopherson
2020-07-07 8:17 ` Paolo Bonzini
2020-07-07 8:26 ` Sean Christopherson [this message]
2020-07-07 8:56 ` Wanpeng Li
2020-07-07 11:35 ` Maxim Levitsky
2020-07-07 17:26 ` Paolo Bonzini
2020-07-07 17:27 ` Sean Christopherson
2020-07-07 11:30 ` Maxim Levitsky
2020-07-07 17:26 ` Paolo Bonzini
2020-07-08 11:57 ` [PATCH] kvm: x86: replace kvm_spec_ctrl_test_value with runtime test on the host Maxim Levitsky
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=20200707082624.GB7417@linux.intel.com \
--to=sean.j.christopherson@intel.com \
--cc=bp@alien8.de \
--cc=hpa@zytor.com \
--cc=jmattson@google.com \
--cc=joro@8bytes.org \
--cc=kvm@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org \
--cc=mingo@redhat.com \
--cc=mlevitsk@redhat.com \
--cc=pbonzini@redhat.com \
--cc=tglx@linutronix.de \
--cc=vkuznets@redhat.com \
--cc=wanpengli@tencent.com \
--cc=x86@kernel.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).