Re: [PATCH v3 1/1] KVM: x86: Introduce has_protected_pmu state for TDX VMs

From: Sean Christopherson

Date: Thu May 07 2026 - 16:12:02 EST


On Thu, May 07, 2026, Vishal Annapurve wrote:
> diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> index 0a1b63c63d1a..99a383455d46 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> +++ b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> @@ -6910,7 +6910,8 @@ int kvm_vm_ioctl_enable_cap(struct kvm *kvm,
> break;
>
> mutex_lock(&kvm->lock);
> - if (!kvm->created_vcpus && !kvm->arch.created_mediated_pmu) {
> + if (!kvm->created_vcpus && !kvm->arch.created_mediated_pmu &&
> + !kvm->arch.has_protected_pmu) {

An offlist Sashiko review pointed out that this will prevent doing
KVM_PMU_CAP_DISABLE on a TDX VM, which could prove problematic if userspace is
already explicitly disabling vPMU support for TDX. I was thinking that wouldn't
be a problem since KVM already disallows KVM_PMU_CAP_DISABLE if enable_pmu=false,
but in that case KVM doesn't advertise KVM_CAP_PMU_VALID_MASK:

r = enable_pmu ? KVM_CAP_PMU_VALID_MASK : 0;

And unless I'm misreading QEMU code, this will indeed be a problem.

Argh. I was going to suggest something sightly fancier, but we rather stupidly
didn't provide a flag for ENABLE, and so we can't feed has_protected_pmu into the
valid mask. Lame.

The other super minor detail is that kvm->arch.has_protected_pmu isn't guarded by
kvm->lock, and I really hope we never get to that point (e.g. for SNP).

So instead of disallowing KVM_CAP_PMU_CAPABILITY entirely, this?

diff --git arch/x86/kvm/x86.c arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
index dc69b8cebe0b..b833a2596430 100644
--- arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
+++ arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
@@ -6911,6 +6911,13 @@ int kvm_vm_ioctl_enable_cap(struct kvm *kvm,
if (!enable_pmu || (cap->args[0] & ~KVM_CAP_PMU_VALID_MASK))
break;

+ if (kvm->arch.has_protected_pmu) {
+ WARN_ON_ONCE(kvm->arch.enable_pmu);
+ if (cap->args[0] == KVM_PMU_CAP_DISABLE)
+ r = 0;
+ break;
+ }
+
mutex_lock(&kvm->lock);
if (!kvm->created_vcpus && !kvm->arch.created_mediated_pmu) {
kvm->arch.enable_pmu = !(cap->args[0] & KVM_PMU_CAP_DISABLE);


> kvm->arch.enable_pmu = !(cap->args[0] & KVM_PMU_CAP_DISABLE);
> r = 0;
> }
> @@ -13375,7 +13376,10 @@ int kvm_arch_init_vm(struct kvm *kvm, unsigned long type)
> kvm->arch.default_tsc_khz = max_tsc_khz ? : tsc_khz;
> kvm->arch.apic_bus_cycle_ns = APIC_BUS_CYCLE_NS_DEFAULT;
> kvm->arch.guest_can_read_msr_platform_info = true;
> - kvm->arch.enable_pmu = enable_pmu;
> + if (kvm->arch.has_protected_pmu)
> + kvm->arch.enable_pmu = false;
> + else
> + kvm->arch.enable_pmu = enable_pmu;
>
> #if IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_HYPERV)
> spin_lock_init(&kvm->arch.hv_root_tdp_lock);
> --
> 2.54.0.563.g4f69b47b94-goog
>