Re: [PATCH] iommu/vt-d: Check VT-d RMRR region in BIOS is reported as reserved

[NOMURA JUNICHI(野村 淳一)]

Hi,

On 10/16/19 1:49 AM, Yian Chen wrote:
> VT-d RMRR (Reserved Memory Region Reporting) regions are reserved
> for device use only and should not be part of allocable memory pool of OS.
> 
> BIOS e820_table reports complete memory map to OS, including OS usable
> memory ranges and BIOS reserved memory ranges etc.
> 
> x86 BIOS may not be trusted to include RMRR regions as reserved type
> of memory in its e820 memory map, hence validate every RMRR entry
> with the e820 memory map to make sure the RMRR regions will not be
> used by OS for any other purposes.

I found "bad RMRR" warnings starting to appear on some x86 servers
since v5.5-rc1 and it gets even louder since v5.6-rc1.  The "bad"
RMRR is for the area resides in ACPI NVS memory region.  For example,

# dmesg|grep RMRR
DMAR: RMRR base: 0x000000a2290000 end: 0x000000a2292fff
DMAR: [Firmware Bug]: No firmware reserved region can cover this RMRR [0x00000000a2290000-0x00000000a2292fff], contact BIOS vendor for fixes
Your BIOS is broken; bad RMRR [0x00000000a2290000-0x00000000a2292fff]

# dmesg|grep NVS
BIOS-e820: [mem 0x00000000a067a000-0x00000000a2a79fff] ACPI NVS
reserve setup_data: [mem 0x00000000a067a000-0x00000000a2a79fff] ACPI NVS
PM: Registering ACPI NVS region [mem 0xa067a000-0xa2a79fff] (37748736 bytes)

The warnings come from arch_rmrr_sanity_check() since it checks whether
the region is E820_TYPE_RESERVED.  However, if the purpose of the check
is to detect RMRR has regions that may be used by OS as free memory,
isn't E820_TYPE_NVS safe, too?

-- 
Jun'ichi Nomura, NEC Corporation / NEC Solution Innovators, Ltd.