Re: [PATCH] KVM: nVMX: WARN on any attempt to allocate shadow VMCS for vmcs02

From: Paolo Bonzini
Date: Wed Jan 26 2022 - 11:05:38 EST


On 1/26/22 16:56, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
- WARN_ON(loaded_vmcs == &vmx->vmcs01 && loaded_vmcs->shadow_vmcs);
+ if (WARN_ON(loaded_vmcs != &vmx->vmcs01 || loaded_vmcs->shadow_vmcs))
+ return loaded_vmcs->shadow_vmcs;
Stupid question: why do we want to care about 'loaded_vmcs' at all,
i.e. why can't we hardcode 'vmx->vmcs01' in alloc_shadow_vmcs()? The
only caller is enter_vmx_operation() and AFAIU 'loaded_vmcs' will always
be pointing to 'vmx->vmcs01' (as enter_vmx_operation() allocates
&vmx->nested.vmcs02 so 'loaded_vmcs' can't point there!).


Well, that's why the WARN never happens. The idea is that if shadow VMCS _virtualization_ (not emulation, i.e. running L2 VMREAD/VMWRITE without even a vmexit to L0) was supported, then you would need a non-NULL shadow_vmcs in vmx->vmcs02.

Regarding the patch, the old WARN was messy but it was also trying to avoid a NULL pointer dereference in the caller.

What about:

if (WARN_ON(loaded_vmcs->shadow_vmcs))
return loaded_vmcs->shadow_vmcs;

/* Go ahead anyway. */
WARN_ON(loaded_vmcs != &vmx->vmcs01);

?

Paolo