Re: [PATCH 3/4] KVM: x86: WARN and reject loading KVM if NX is supported but not enabled

From: Jim Mattson
Date: Tue Jun 15 2021 - 18:40:07 EST


On Tue, Jun 15, 2021 at 9:45 AM Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> WARN if NX is reported as supported but not enabled in EFER. All flavors
> of the kernel, including non-PAE 32-bit kernels, set EFER.NX=1 if NX is
> supported, even if NX usage is disable via kernel command line. KVM relies
> on NX being enabled if it's supported, e.g. KVM will generate illegal NPT
> entries if nx_huge_pages is enabled and NX is supported but not enabled.
>
> Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
> arch/x86/kvm/x86.c | 3 +++
> 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)
>
> diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> index acc28473dec7..1f6595df45de 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> +++ b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> @@ -10981,6 +10981,9 @@ int kvm_arch_hardware_setup(void *opaque)
> int r;
>
> rdmsrl_safe(MSR_EFER, &host_efer);
> + if (WARN_ON_ONCE(boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_NX) &&
> + !(host_efer & EFER_NX)))
> + return -EIO;

Input/output error? Is that really the most appropriate error here?
Why not, say, -ENOTSUP?

I'm sure there's some arcane convention here that I'm not privy to. :-)

Reviewed-by: Jim Mattson <jmattson@xxxxxxxxxx>