Date:   Wed, 20 Jul 2022 05:58:28 -0400
From:   "Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>
To:     Keir Fraser <keirf@...gle.com>
Cc:     Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>,
        Jason Wang <jasowang@...hat.com>, kernel-team@...roid.com,
        virtualization@...ts.linux-foundation.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] virtio: Force DMA restricted devices through DMA API

On Wed, Jul 20, 2022 at 08:27:51AM +0000, Keir Fraser wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2022 at 02:59:53AM -0400, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> > On Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 04:11:50PM +0000, Keir Fraser wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 08:51:54AM -0700, Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> > > > On Tue, Jul 19, 2022 at 03:46:08PM +0000, Keir Fraser wrote:
> > > > > However, if the general idea at least is acceptable, would the
> > > > > implementation be acceptable if I add an explicit API for this to the
> > > > > DMA subsystem, and hide the detail there?
> > > > 
> > > > I don't think so.  The right thing to key off is
> > > > VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM, which really should be set in any modern
> > > > virtio device after all the problems we had with the lack of it.
> > > 
> > > Ok. Certainly the flag description in virtio spec fits the bill.
> > 
> > Maybe. But balloon really isn't a normal device. Yes the rings kind of
> > operate more or less normally. However consider for example free page
> > hinting. We stick a page address in ring for purposes of telling host it
> > can blow it away at any later time unless we write something into the
> > page.  Free page reporting is similar.
> > Sending gigabytes of memory through swiotlb is at minimum not
> > a good idea.
> 
> I don't think any balloon use case needs the page's guest data to be
> made available to the host device. What the device side does with
> reported guest-physical page addresses is somewhat VMM/Hyp specific,
> but I think it's fair to say it will know how to reclaim or track
> pages by guest PA, and bouncing reported/hinted page addresses through
> a SWIOTLB or IOMMU would not be of any use to any use case I can think
> of.
> 
> As far as I can see, the only translation that makes sense at all for
> virtio balloon is in ring management.
> 
> > Conversely, is it even okay security wise that host can blow away any
> > guest page?  Because with balloon GFNs do not go through bounce
> > buffering.
> 
> Ok, I think this is fair and I can address that by describing the use
> case more broadly.
> 
> The short answer is that there will be more patches forthcoming,
> because the balloon driver will need to tell the hypervisor (EL2 Hyp
> in the ARM PKVM case) that is is willingly relinquishing memory
> pages. So, there will be a patch to add a new HVC to PKVM Hyp, and a
> patch to detect and use the new HVC via a new API that hooks into
> Linux's balloon infrastructure.
> 
> So the use case is that virtio_balloon needs to set up its rings and
> descriptors in a shared memory region, as requested via
> dma-restricted-pool and the VIRTIO_F_PALTFORM_ACCESS flag. This is
> required because the host device has no access to regular guest
> memory.
> 
> However, in PKVM, page notifications will notify both the (trusted)
> Hypervisor, via hypercall, and the (untrusted) VMM, via virtio. Guest
> physical addresses are fine here. The VMM understands guest PAs
> perfectly well, it's just not normally allowed to access their
> contents or otherwise map or use those pages itself.

OK ... and I wonder whether this extends the balloon device
in some way? Is there or can there be a new feature bit for this
functionality?


> > 
> > > > > Or a completely different approach would be to revert the patch
> > > > > e41b1355508d which clears VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM in the balloon
> > > > > driver. MST: That's back in your court, as it's your patch!
> > > > 
> > > > Which also means this needs to be addresses, but I don't think a
> > > > simple revert is enough.
> > > 
> > > Well here are two possible approaches:
> > > 
> > > 1. Revert e41b1355508d outright. I'm not even sure what it would mean
> > > for reported pages to go through IOMMU. And VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM
> > > is no longer IOMMU-specific anyway.
> > > 
> > > 2. Continue to clear the flag during virtio_balloon negotiation, but
> > > remember that it was offered, and test for that in vring_use_dma_api()
> > > as well as, or instead of, virtio_has_dma_quirk().
> > > 
> > > Do either of those appeal?
> > 
> > I think the use case needs to be documented better.
> 
> I hope the above is helpful in giving some more context.
> 
> Perhaps it would make more sense to re-submit this patch as part of
> a larger series that includes the rest of the mechanism needed to
> support virtio_balloon on PKVM?
> 
> Thanks,
> Keir

I suspect so, yes.


> > 
> > -- 
> > MST
> > 
> > 

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