Date:   Tue, 21 Sep 2021 09:58:38 +0000
From:   Ashish Kalra <ashish.kalra@....com>
To:     Sean Christopherson <seanjc@...gle.com>
Cc:     Steve Rutherford <srutherford@...gle.com>, pbonzini@...hat.com,
        tglx@...utronix.de, mingo@...hat.com, hpa@...or.com,
        joro@...tes.org, bp@...en8.de, thomas.lendacky@....com,
        x86@...nel.org, kvm@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        brijesh.singh@....com, dovmurik@...ux.ibm.com, tobin@...ux.ibm.com,
        jejb@...ux.ibm.com, dgilbert@...hat.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH v6 1/5] x86/kvm: Add AMD SEV specific Hypercall3

Hello Sean, Steve,

On Mon, Sep 20, 2021 at 04:07:04PM +0000, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 15, 2021, Steve Rutherford wrote:
> > Looking at these threads, this patch either:
> > 1) Needs review/approval from a maintainer that is interested or
> > 2) Should flip back to using alternative (as suggested by Sean). In
> > particular: `ALTERNATIVE("vmmcall", "vmcall",
> > ALT_NOT(X86_FEATURE_VMMCALL))`. My understanding is that the advantage
> > of this is that (after calling apply alternatives) you get exactly the
> > same behavior as before. But before apply alternatives, you get the
> > desired flipped behavior. The previous patch changed the behavior
> > after apply alternatives in a very slight manner (if feature flags
> > were not set, you'd get a different instruction).
> > 

This is simply a Hack, i don't think this is a good approach to take forward.

> > I personally don't have strong feelings on this decision, but this
> > decision does need to be made for this patch series to move forward.
> > 
> > I'd also be curious to hear Sean's opinion on this since he was vocal
> > about this previously.
> 
> Pulling in Ashish's last email from the previous thread, which I failed to respond
> to.
> 
> https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flore.kernel.org%2Fall%2F20210820133223.GA28059%40ashkalra_ubuntu_server%2FT%2F%23u&amp;data=04%7C01%7CAshish.Kalra%40amd.com%7C14e66eb4c505448175ae08d97c50b3c1%7C3dd8961fe4884e608e11a82d994e183d%7C0%7C0%7C637677508322702274%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&amp;sdata=STJ6ze6iE7Uu7U3XPwWhMxwB%2BoYYcbZ7JcnIdlZ41rY%3D&amp;reserved=0
> 
> On Fri, Aug 20, 2021, Ashish Kalra wrote:
> > On Thu, Aug 19, 2021 at 11:15:26PM +0000, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > > On Thu, Aug 19, 2021, Kalra, Ashish wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > On Aug 20, 2021, at 3:38 AM, Kalra, Ashish <Ashish.Kalra@....com> wrote:
> > > > > I think it makes more sense to stick to the original approach/patch, i.e.,
> > > > > introducing a new private hypercall interface like kvm_sev_hypercall3() and
> > > > > let early paravirtualized kernel code invoke this private hypercall
> > > > > interface wherever required.
> > >
> > > I don't like the idea of duplicating code just because the problem is tricky to
> > > solve.  Right now it's just one function, but it could balloon to multiple in
> > > the future.  Plus there's always the possibility of a new, pre-alternatives
> > > kvm_hypercall() being added in generic code, at which point using an SEV-specific
> > > variant gets even uglier.
> 
> ...
> 
> > Now, apply_alternatives() is called much later when setup_arch() calls
> > check_bugs(), so we do need some kind of an early, pre-alternatives
> > hypercall interface.
> >
> > Other cases of pre-alternatives hypercalls include marking per-cpu GHCB
> > pages as decrypted on SEV-ES and per-cpu apf_reason, steal_time and
> > kvm_apic_eoi as decrypted for SEV generally.
> >
> > Actually using this kvm_sev_hypercall3() function may be abstracted
> > quite nicely. All these early hypercalls are made through
> > early_set_memory_XX() interfaces, which in turn invoke pv_ops.
> >
> > Now, pv_ops can have this SEV/TDX specific abstractions.
> >
> > Currently, pv_ops.mmu.notify_page_enc_status_changed() callback is setup
> > to kvm_sev_hypercall3() in case of SEV.
> >
> > Similarly, in case of TDX, pv_ops.mmu.notify_page_enc_status_changed() can
> > be setup to a TDX specific callback.
> >
> > Therefore, this early_set_memory_XX() -> pv_ops.mmu.notify_page_enc_status_changed()
> > is a generic interface and can easily have SEV, TDX and any other future platform
> > specific abstractions added to it.
> 
> Unless there's some fundamental technical hurdle I'm overlooking, if pv_ops can
> be configured early enough to handle this, then so can alternatives.  
> 

Now, as i mentioned earlier, apply_alternatives() is only called boot
CPU identification has been done which is a lot of support code which
may be dependent on earlier setup_arch() code and then it does CPU
mitigtion selections before patching alternatives, again which may have
dependencies on previous code paths in setup_arch(), so i am not sure if
we can call apply_alternatives() earlier. 

Maybe for a guest kernel and virtualized boot enviroment, CPU
identification may not be as complicated as for a physical host, but
still it may have dependencies on earlier architecture specific boot
code.

> Adding notify_page_enc_status_changed() may be necessary in the future, e.g. for TDX
> or SNP, but IMO that is orthogonal to adding a generic, 100% redundant helper.

If we have to do this in the future and as Sean mentioned ealier that
vmcall needs to be fixed for TDX (as it will cause a #VE), then why not
add this abstraction right now ?

Thanks,
Ashish

> I appreciate that simply swapping the default from VMCALL->VMMCALL is a bit dirty
> since it gives special meaning to the default value, but if that's the argument
> against reusing kvm_hypercall3() then we should solve the early alternatives
> problem, not fudge around it.

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