Re: [PATCH 2/6] drivers: base: Add bits to struct device to control iommu strictness

[Doug Anderson]

Hi,

On Thu, Jun 24, 2021 at 6:37 AM Greg KH <gregkh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 21, 2021 at 04:52:44PM -0700, Douglas Anderson wrote:
> > How to control the "strictness" of an IOMMU is a bit of a mess right
> > now. As far as I can tell, right now:
> > * You can set the default to "non-strict" and some devices (right now,
> >   only PCI devices) can request to run in "strict" mode.
> > * You can set the default to "strict" and no devices in the system are
> >   allowed to run as "non-strict".
> >
> > I believe this needs to be improved a bit. Specifically:
> > * We should be able to default to "strict" mode but let devices that
> >   claim to be fairly low risk request that they be run in "non-strict"
> >   mode.
> > * We should allow devices outside of PCIe to request "strict" mode if
> >   the system default is "non-strict".
> >
> > I believe the correct way to do this is two bits in "struct
> > device". One allows a device to force things to "strict" mode and the
> > other allows a device to _request_ "non-strict" mode. The asymmetry
> > here is on purpose. Generally if anything in the system makes a
> > request for strictness of something then we want it strict. Thus
> > drivers can only request (but not force) non-strictness.
> >
> > It's expected that the strictness fields can be filled in by the bus
> > code like in the patch ("PCI: Indicate that we want to force strict
> > DMA for untrusted devices") or by using the new pre_probe concept
> > introduced in the patch ("drivers: base: Add the concept of
> > "pre_probe" to drivers").
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Douglas Anderson <dianders@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > ---
> >
> >  include/linux/device.h | 11 +++++++++++
> >  1 file changed, 11 insertions(+)
> >
> > diff --git a/include/linux/device.h b/include/linux/device.h
> > index f1a00040fa53..c1b985e10c47 100644
> > --- a/include/linux/device.h
> > +++ b/include/linux/device.h
> > @@ -449,6 +449,15 @@ struct dev_links_info {
> >   *           and optionall (if the coherent mask is large enough) also
> >   *           for dma allocations.  This flag is managed by the dma ops
> >   *           instance from ->dma_supported.
> > + * @force_strict_iommu: If set to %true then we should force this device to
> > + *                   iommu.strict regardless of the other defaults in the
> > + *                   system. Only has an effect if an IOMMU is in place.
>
> Why would you ever NOT want to do this?
>
> > + * @request_non_strict_iommu: If set to %true and there are no other known
> > + *                         reasons to make the iommu.strict for this device,
> > + *                         then default to non-strict mode. This implies
> > + *                         some belief that the DMA master for this device
> > + *                         won't abuse the DMA path to compromise the kernel.
> > + *                         Only has an effect if an IOMMU is in place.
>
> This feels in contrast to the previous field you just added, how do they
> both interact?  Would an enum work better?

Right that it never makes sense to set both bits so an enum could work
better, essentially it would be { dont_care, request_non_strict,
force_strict }.

In any case the whole idea of doing this at the device level looks
like it's not the right way to go anyway, so this patch and the
previous pre_probe one are essentially abandoned and I need to send
out a v2 with some different approaches.

-Doug