Date:   Mon, 8 Mar 2021 21:32:58 +0000
From:   Ashish Kalra <ashish.kalra@....com>
To:     Brijesh Singh <brijesh.singh@....com>
Cc:     Sean Christopherson <seanjc@...gle.com>,
        Steve Rutherford <srutherford@...gle.com>,
        "pbonzini@...hat.com" <pbonzini@...hat.com>,
        "joro@...tes.org" <joro@...tes.org>,
        "Lendacky, Thomas" <Thomas.Lendacky@....com>,
        "kvm@...r.kernel.org" <kvm@...r.kernel.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "venu.busireddy@...cle.com" <venu.busireddy@...cle.com>,
        Will Deacon <will@...nel.org>,
        Quentin Perret <qperret@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v10 10/16] KVM: x86: Introduce KVM_GET_SHARED_PAGES_LIST
 ioctl

On Mon, Mar 08, 2021 at 03:11:41PM -0600, Brijesh Singh wrote:
> 
> On 3/8/21 1:51 PM, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 08, 2021, Ashish Kalra wrote:
> >> On Fri, Feb 26, 2021 at 09:44:41AM -0800, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> >>> +Will and Quentin (arm64)
> >>>
> >>> Moving the non-KVM x86 folks to bcc, I don't they care about KVM details at this
> >>> point.
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Feb 26, 2021, Ashish Kalra wrote:
> >>>> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 02:59:27PM -0800, Steve Rutherford wrote:
> >>>>> On Thu, Feb 25, 2021 at 12:20 PM Ashish Kalra <ashish.kalra@....com> wrote:
> >>>>> Thanks for grabbing the data!
> >>>>>
> >>>>> I am fine with both paths. Sean has stated an explicit desire for
> >>>>> hypercall exiting, so I think that would be the current consensus.
> >>> Yep, though it'd be good to get Paolo's input, too.
> >>>
> >>>>> If we want to do hypercall exiting, this should be in a follow-up
> >>>>> series where we implement something more generic, e.g. a hypercall
> >>>>> exiting bitmap or hypercall exit list. If we are taking the hypercall
> >>>>> exit route, we can drop the kvm side of the hypercall.
> >>> I don't think this is a good candidate for arbitrary hypercall interception.  Or
> >>> rather, I think hypercall interception should be an orthogonal implementation.
> >>>
> >>> The guest, including guest firmware, needs to be aware that the hypercall is
> >>> supported, and the ABI needs to be well-defined.  Relying on userspace VMMs to
> >>> implement a common ABI is an unnecessary risk.
> >>>
> >>> We could make KVM's default behavior be a nop, i.e. have KVM enforce the ABI but
> >>> require further VMM intervention.  But, I just don't see the point, it would
> >>> save only a few lines of code.  It would also limit what KVM could do in the
> >>> future, e.g. if KVM wanted to do its own bookkeeping _and_ exit to userspace,
> >>> then mandatory interception would essentially make it impossible for KVM to do
> >>> bookkeeping while still honoring the interception request.
> >>>
> >>> However, I do think it would make sense to have the userspace exit be a generic
> >>> exit type.  But hey, we already have the necessary ABI defined for that!  It's
> >>> just not used anywhere.
> >>>
> >>> 	/* KVM_EXIT_HYPERCALL */
> >>> 	struct {
> >>> 		__u64 nr;
> >>> 		__u64 args[6];
> >>> 		__u64 ret;
> >>> 		__u32 longmode;
> >>> 		__u32 pad;
> >>> 	} hypercall;
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>> Userspace could also handle the MSR using MSR filters (would need to
> >>>>> confirm that).  Then userspace could also be in control of the cpuid bit.
> >>> An MSR is not a great fit; it's x86 specific and limited to 64 bits of data.
> >>> The data limitation could be fudged by shoving data into non-standard GPRs, but
> >>> that will result in truly heinous guest code, and extensibility issues.
> >>>
> >>> The data limitation is a moot point, because the x86-only thing is a deal
> >>> breaker.  arm64's pKVM work has a near-identical use case for a guest to share
> >>> memory with a host.  I can't think of a clever way to avoid having to support
> >>> TDX's and SNP's hypervisor-agnostic variants, but we can at least not have
> >>> multiple KVM variants.
> >>>
> >> Potentially, there is another reason for in-kernel hypercall handling
> >> considering SEV-SNP. In case of SEV-SNP the RMP table tracks the state
> >> of each guest page, for instance pages in hypervisor state, i.e., pages
> >> with C=0 and pages in guest valid state with C=1.
> >>
> >> Now, there shouldn't be a need for page encryption status hypercalls on 
> >> SEV-SNP as KVM can track & reference guest page status directly using 
> >> the RMP table.
> > Relying on the RMP table itself would require locking the RMP table for an
> > extended duration, and walking the entire RMP to find shared pages would be
> > very inefficient.
> >
> >> As KVM maintains the RMP table, therefore we will need SET/GET type of
> >> interfaces to provide the guest page encryption status to userspace.
> > Hrm, somehow I temporarily forgot about SNP and TDX adding their own hypercalls
> > for converting between shared and private.  And in the case of TDX, the hypercall
> > can't be trusted, i.e. is just a hint, otherwise the guest could induce a #MC in
> > the host.
> >
> > But, the different guest behavior doesn't require KVM to maintain a list/tree,
> > e.g. adding a dedicated KVM_EXIT_* for notifying userspace of page encryption
> > status changes would also suffice.  
> >
> > Actually, that made me think of another argument against maintaining a list in
> > KVM: there's no way to notify userspace that a page's status has changed.
> > Userspace would need to query KVM to do GET_LIST after every GET_DIRTY.
> > Obviously not a huge issue, but it does make migration slightly less efficient.
> >
> > On a related topic, there are fatal race conditions that will require careful
> > coordination between guest and host, and will effectively be wired into the ABI.
> > SNP and TDX don't suffer these issues because host awareness of status is atomic
> > with respect to the guest actually writing the page with the new encryption
> > status.
> >
> > For SEV live migration...
> >
> > If the guest does the hypercall after writing the page, then the guest is hosed
> > if it gets migrated while writing the page (scenario #1):
> >
> >   vCPU                 Userspace
> >   zero_bytes[0:N]
> >                        <transfers written bytes as private instead of shared>
> > 		       <migrates vCPU>
> >   zero_bytes[N+1:4095]
> >   set_shared (dest)
> >   kaboom!
> 
> 
> Maybe I am missing something, this is not any different from a normal
> operation inside a guest. Making a page shared/private in the page table
> does not update the content of the page itself. In your above case, I
> assume zero_bytes[N+1:4095] are written by the destination VM. The
> memory region was private in the source VM page table, so, those writes
> will be performed encrypted. The destination VM later changed the memory
> to shared, but nobody wrote to the memory after it has been transitioned
> to the  shared, so a reader of the memory should get ciphertext and
> unless there was a write after the set_shared (dest).
> 
> 
> > If userspace does GET_DIRTY after GET_LIST, then the host would transfer bad
> > data by consuming a stale list (scenario #2):
> >
> >   vCPU               Userspace
> >                      get_list (from KVM or internally)
> >   set_shared (src)
> >   zero_page (src)
> >                      get_dirty
> >                      <transfers private data instead of shared>
> >                      <migrates vCPU>
> >   kaboom!
> 
> 
> I don't remember how things are done in recent Ashish Qemu/KVM patches
> but in previous series, the get_dirty() happens before the querying the
> encrypted state. There was some logic in VMM to resync the encrypted
> bitmap during the final migration stage and perform any additional data
> transfer since last sync.
> 
> 

Yes, we do that and in fact, we added logic in VMM to resync the
encrypted bitmap after every migration iteration and if there is a
difference in encrypted page states, then we perform additional data
transfers corresponding to those changes.

Thanks,
Ashish

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