Re: [PATCH 0/2] virtio: Support encrypted memory on powerpc secure guests

[Ram Pai]

Hmm.. git-send-email forgot to CC  Michael Tsirkin, and Thiago; the
original author, who is on vacation.

Adding them now.
RP

On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 06:25:17PM -0700, Ram Pai wrote:
>  **We would like the patches to be merged through the virtio tree.  Please
>  review, and ack merging the DMA mapping change through that tree. Thanks!**
> 
>  The memory of powerpc secure guests can't be accessed by the hypervisor /
>  virtio device except for a few memory regions designated as 'shared'.
> 
>  At the moment, Linux uses bounce-buffering to communicate with the
>  hypervisor, with a bounce buffer marked as shared. This is how the DMA API
>  is implemented on this platform.
> 
>  In particular, the most convenient way to use virtio on this platform is by
>  making virtio use the DMA API: in fact, this is exactly what happens if the
>  virtio device exposes the flag VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM.  However, bugs in the
>  hypervisor on the powerpc platform do not allow setting this flag, with some
>  hypervisors already in the field that don't set this flag. At the moment they
>  are forced to use emulated devices when guest is in secure mode; virtio is
>  only useful when guest is not secure.
> 
>  Normally, both device and driver must support VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM:
>  if one of them doesn't, the other mustn't assume it for communication
>  to work.
> 
>  However, a guest-side work-around is possible to enable virtio
>  for these hypervisors with guest in secure mode: it so happens that on
>  powerpc secure platform the DMA address is actually a physical address -
>  that of the bounce buffer. For these platforms we can make the virtio
>  driver go through the DMA API even though the device itself ignores
>  the DMA API.
> 
>  These patches implement this work around for virtio: we detect that
>  - secure guest mode is enabled - so we know that since we don't share
>    most memory and Hypervisor has not enabled VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM,
>    regular virtio code won't work.
>  - DMA API is giving us addresses that are actually also physical
>    addresses.
>  - Hypervisor has not enabled VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM.
> 
>  and if all conditions are true, we force all data through the bounce
>  buffer.
> 
>  To put it another way, from hypervisor's point of view DMA API is
>  not required: hypervisor would be happy to get access to all of guest
>  memory. That's why it does not set VIRTIO_F_ACCESS_PLATFORM. However,
>  guest decides that it does not trust the hypervisor and wants to force
>  a bounce buffer for its own reasons.
> 
> 
> Thiago Jung Bauermann (2):
>   dma-mapping: Add dma_addr_is_phys_addr()
>   virtio_ring: Use DMA API if memory is encrypted
> 
>  arch/powerpc/include/asm/dma-mapping.h | 21 +++++++++++++++++++++
>  arch/powerpc/platforms/pseries/Kconfig |  1 +
>  drivers/virtio/virtio.c                | 18 ++++++++++++++++++
>  drivers/virtio/virtio_ring.c           |  8 ++++++++
>  include/linux/dma-mapping.h            | 20 ++++++++++++++++++++
>  include/linux/virtio_config.h          | 14 ++++++++++++++
>  kernel/dma/Kconfig                     |  3 +++
>  7 files changed, 85 insertions(+)
> 
> -- 
> 1.8.3.1

-- 
Ram Pai