Re: [RFC PATCH] mm/vmalloc: add vmalloc_decrypted() and vzalloc_decrypted()

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2026 at 07:06:00PM +0000, Michael Kelley wrote:

> > I thought arches are either preserving the memory content or zeroing
> > it, you are saying some arch leaves it as garbage? I'd argue that's an
> > arch bug and they should clear it in their path.
> 
> AMD SEV-SNP leaves the memory contents as garbage after an encryption
> or decryption state change. On the flip side, my understanding has been
> that TDX zeroes the memory (or at least has an option to do so) after
> such a state change, though a couple of AI chats say TDX also leaves
> garbage. To be sure, I'd have to run an experiment to check in a TDX
> guest on Hyper-V.

So there are many bugs then if the pre-zero is lost and you have to
zero it again. Even swiotlb doesn't reliably zero it's pools in the
right order under these rules, though alloc coherent does get it
right at least.

IMHO this is too sketchy to be usable and optimizing for AMD is not
the right call, IMHO.

> > Otherwise this sharp edge is not documented and we have many other
> > places getting it wrong, eg system_heap_allocate() doesn't re-zero the
> > memory after decrypting it.
> 
> In the Hyper-V code that uses set_memory_decrypted()/encrypted(),
> there's always an explicit call to set the memory to zero afterwards.

Good for it, maybe next time improve the APIs :(

Even more compelling that hyper-v should be using the dma api..

Jason