linux-kernel - Re: [RFC,05/10] x86/speculation: Add basic IBRS support infrastructure

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Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.20.1801311111181.2293@nanos>
Date:   Wed, 31 Jan 2018 11:15:50 +0100 (CET)
From:   Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>
To:     Christophe de Dinechin <christophe.de.dinechin@...il.com>
cc:     Alan Cox <gnomes@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        David Woodhouse <dwmw2@...radead.org>,
        Arjan van de Ven <arjan@...ux.intel.com>,
        Eduardo Habkost <ehabkost@...hat.com>,
        KarimAllah Ahmed <karahmed@...zon.de>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Andi Kleen <ak@...ux.intel.com>,
        Andrea Arcangeli <aarcange@...hat.com>,
        Andy Lutomirski <luto@...nel.org>,
        Ashok Raj <ashok.raj@...el.com>,
        Asit Mallick <asit.k.mallick@...el.com>,
        Borislav Petkov <bp@...e.de>,
        Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@...el.com>,
        Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...el.com>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        "H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
        Janakarajan Natarajan <Janakarajan.Natarajan@....com>,
        Joerg Roedel <joro@...tes.org>,
        Jun Nakajima <jun.nakajima@...el.com>,
        Laura Abbott <labbott@...hat.com>,
        Masami Hiramatsu <mhiramat@...nel.org>,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
        Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
        Radim Krčmář <rkrcmar@...hat.com>,
        Tim Chen <tim.c.chen@...ux.intel.com>,
        Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@....com>,
        KVM list <kvm@...r.kernel.org>,
        the arch/x86 maintainers <x86@...nel.org>,
        "Dr. David Alan Gilbert" <dgilbert@...hat.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC,05/10] x86/speculation: Add basic IBRS support
 infrastructure

On Wed, 31 Jan 2018, Christophe de Dinechin wrote:
> > On 30 Jan 2018, at 21:46, Alan Cox <gnomes@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
> > 
> >> If you are ever going to migrate to Skylake, I think you should just
> >> always tell the guests that you're running on Skylake. That way the
> >> guests will always assume the worst case situation wrt Specte.
> > 
> > Unfortunately if you do that then guest may also decide to use other
> > Skylake hardware features and pop its clogs when it finds out its actually
> > running on Westmere or SandyBridge.
> > 
> > So you need to be able to both lie to the OS and user space via cpuid and
> > also have a second 'but do skylake protections' that only mitigation
> > aware software knows about.
> 
> Yes. The most desirable lie is different depending on whether you want to
> allow virtualization features such as migration (where you’d gravitate
> towards a CPU with less features) or whether you want to allow mitigation
> (where you’d rather present the most fragile CPUID, probably Skylake).
> 
> Looking at some recent patches, I’m concerned that the code being added
> often assumes that the CPUID is the correct way to get that info.
> I do not think this is correct. You really want specific information about
> the host CPUID, not whatever KVM CPUID emulation makes up.

That wont cut it. If you have a heterogenous farm of systems, then you need:

  - All CPUs have to support IBRS/IBPB or at least hte hypervisor has to
    pretend they do by providing fake MRS for that

  - Have a 'force IBRS/IBPB' mechanism so the guests don't discard it due
    to missing CPU feature bits.

Though this gets worse. You have to make sure that the guest keeps _ALL_
sorts of mitigation mechanisms enabled and does not decide to disable
retpolines because IBRS/IBPB are "available".

Good luck with making all that work.

Thanks,

	tglx