Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] Dirtying, failing memop: don't indicate suppression

From: Janosch Frank
Date: Tue Apr 26 2022 - 08:35:10 EST


[...]

The only question is, do we need to change the suppression parameter in
access_guest_with_key

   (mode != GACC_STORE) || (idx == 0)

to also check for prot != PROT_TYPE_KEYC
? I think we do not need this as we have checked other reasons before.

Yes, it is not necessary, the control flow is such that a protection exception
implies that is due to keys.

To me this measure looks like a last resort option and the POP doesn't state a 100% what is to be done. Some instructions can mandate suppression instead of termination according to the architects.

My intuition tells me that if we are in a situation where this would happen then we would be much better off just doing it by hand (i.e. in the instruction emulation code) and not letting this function decide.

For the instructions we currently need to emulate in KVM we should be fine.
So the question is what's best for the future and for instructions emulated by user space.
Upward in the call stack (including user space), we don't know the failing address,
which complicates handling it in the emulation code.
You could chop up the memop in page chunks to find out, but that might have other issues.

Since this behavior is very implicit and easy to overlook maybe we should document it
in the description of the memop ioctl?

Yeah, properly documenting this is the least we can do.