Re: [PATCH] kvm: x86: rewrite kvm_spec_ctrl_valid_bits

[Maxim Levitsky]

On Mon, 2020-07-06 at 23:11 -0700, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 05, 2020 at 12:40:25PM +0300, Maxim Levitsky wrote:
> > > Rather than compute the mask every time, it can be computed once on module
> > > load and stashed in a global.  Note, there's a RFC series[*] to support
> > > reprobing bugs at runtime, but that has bigger issues with existing KVM
> > > functionality to be addressed, i.e. it's not our problem, yet :-).
> > > 
> > > [*] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/1593703107-8852-1-git-send-email-mihai.carabas@xxxxxxxxxx
> > 
> > Thanks for the pointer!
> >  
> > Note though that the above code only runs once, since after a single
> > successful (non #GP) set of it to non-zero value, it is cleared in MSR bitmap
> > for both reads and writes on both VMX and SVM.
> 
> For me the performance is secondary to documenting the fact that the host
> valid bits are fixed for a given instance of the kernel.  There's enough
> going on in kvm_spec_ctrl_valid_bits_host() that's it's not super easy to
> see that it's a "constant" value.
> 
> > This is done because of performance reasons which in this case are more
> > important than absolute correctness.  Thus to some extent the guest checks in
> > the above are pointless.
> >  
> > If you ask me, I would just remove the kvm_spec_ctrl_valid_bits, and pass
> > this msr to guest right away and not on first access.
> 
> That would unnecessarily penalize guests that don't utilize the MSR as KVM
> would need to do a RDMSR on every VM-Exit to grab the guest's value.
I haven't thought about this, this makes sense.

> 
> One oddity with this whole thing is that by passing through the MSR, KVM is
> allowing the guest to write bits it doesn't know about, which is definitely
> not normal.  It also means the guest could write bits that the host VMM
> can't.
> 
> Somehwat crazy idea inbound... rather than calculating the valid bits in
> software, what if we throw the value at the CPU and see if it fails?  At
> least that way the host and guest are subject to the same rules.  E.g.
> 
> --- a/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c
> +++ b/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c
> @@ -2062,11 +2062,19 @@ static int vmx_set_msr(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, struct msr_data *msr_info)
>                     !guest_cpuid_has(vcpu, X86_FEATURE_SPEC_CTRL))
>                         return 1;
> 
> -               if (data & ~kvm_spec_ctrl_valid_bits(vcpu))
> -                       return 1;
> -
> +               ret = 0;
>                 vmx->spec_ctrl = data;
> -               if (!data)
> +
> +               local_irq_disable();
> +               if (rdmsrl_safe(MSR_IA32_SPEC_CTRL, &data))
> +                       ret = 1;
> +               else if (wrmsrl_safe(MSR_IA32_SPEC_CTRL, vmx->spec_ctrl))
> +                       ret = 1;
> +               else
> +                       wrmsrl(MSR_IA32_SPEC_CTRL, data))
> +               local_irq_enable();
> +
> +               if (ret || !vmx->spec_ctrl)
>                         break;
> 
>                 /*
> 
I don't mind this as well, knowing that this is done only one per VM run anyway.

Best regards,
	Maxim Levitsky