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Message-ID: <20250318141659.GDZ9mAWwa3dkQDHkCk@fat_crate.local>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2025 15:16:59 +0100
From: Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>
To: Pawan Gupta <pawan.kumar.gupta@...ux.intel.com>
Cc: David Kaplan <david.kaplan@....com>,
Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>,
Josh Poimboeuf <jpoimboe@...nel.org>,
Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>,
Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@...ux.intel.com>, x86@...nel.org,
"H . Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
Brendan Jackman <jackmanb@...gle.com>,
Derek Manwaring <derekmn@...zon.com>
Subject: MMIO and VERW
Carving this thing out into a separate thread:
On Thu, Mar 13, 2025 at 12:26:06PM -0700, Pawan Gupta wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 13, 2025 at 10:36:17AM +0100, Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > I'd expect to see:
> >
> > if (mmio_mitigation == MMIO_MITIGATION_AUTO) {
> > mmio_mitigation = MMIO_MITIGATION_VERW;
> > verw_mitigation_selected = true;
> > }
> >
> > if (boot_cpu_has_bug(X86_BUG_MDS) || taa_vulnerable())
> > verw_mitigation_selected = true;
> >
> > because the above branch already selected MMIO_MITIGATION_VERW so we might as
> > well set verw_mitigation_selected, right?
>
> There is a subtle difference between setting verw_mitigation_selected and
> MMIO_MITIGATION_VERW. The former is a system-wide switch that indicates
> VERW is needed at both kernel-exit and VMenter. MMIO Stale Data is
> different from other VERW based mitigations because it only requires VERW
> at VMenter, when not affected by MDS/TAA. So, turning the system-wide knob
> here would be wrong.
Realistically speaking, do we have a machine where you *only* enable VERW on
VMENTER?
I'm not talking about some experimentation scenario where one measures which
mitigations cost how much.
Do we have a real-life hw configuration where the *only* VERW mitigation
needed is at VMENTER because that machine is affected *only* by MMIO and no
other VERW-based mitigation is needed?
Because if not, we might as well drop that too-special distinction and
simplify that maze of nasty conditional spaghetti...
Hmmm?
--
Regards/Gruss,
Boris.
https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette
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