Re: [PATCH 1/3] KVM: x86: use native MSR ops for SPEC_CTRL
From: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk
Date: Fri Feb 23 2018 - 12:56:07 EST
On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 06:35:30PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 23/02/2018 18:22, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> > On Fri, Feb 23, 2018 at 10:37:49AM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> >> On 22/02/2018 18:07, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk wrote:
> >>>> Having a paravirt indirect call in the IBRS restore path is not a
> >>>> good idea, since we are trying to protect from speculative execution
> >>>> of bogus indirect branch targets. It is also slower, so use
> >>>> native_wrmsrl on the vmentry path too.
> >>> But it gets replaced during patching. As in once the machine boots
> >>> the assembler changes from:
> >>>
> >>> callq *0xfffflbah
> >>>
> >>> to
> >>> wrmsr
> >>>
> >>> ? I don't think you need this patch.
> >>
> >> Why not be explicit? According to the spec, PRED_CMD and SPEC_CTRL
> >
> > Explicit is fine.
> >
> > But I would recommend you change the commit message to say so, and
> > perhaps remove 'It is also slower' - as that is incorrect.
>
> Actually it is faster---that's why I made the change in the first place,
> though later I noticed
>
> > If it is detected to be Xen PV, then yes
> > it will be a call to a function. But that won't help as Xen PV runs in
> > ring 3, so it has a whole bunch of other issues.
>
> Ok, I wasn't sure about PVH (which runs in ring 0 afair).
Right. PVH is HVM without any emulated devices or BIOSes or such.
In the context of the paravirt ops, Xen PVH == Xen HVM.
Xen PV (and lguests) are the only ones that patch the the
callq *0xffffblah
to
callq 0xffff800
While everyone else does the wrmsr.
>
> Paolo