Re: [RFC PATCH v2 02/11] KVM: x86: Advertise CPUID.7.2.EDX and RRSBA_CTRL support

[Xiaoyao Li]

On 5/16/2023 11:01 AM, Chao Gao wrote:
> On Tue, May 16, 2023 at 10:22:22AM +0800, Xiaoyao Li wrote:
> > > > I think we need to fix this bug at first.
> > >
> > > I have no idea how to fix the "bug" without intercepting the MSR. The
> > > performance penalty makes me think intercepting the MSR is not a viable
> > > solution.
> >
> > I thought correctness always takes higher priority over performance.
>
> It is generally true. however, there are situations where we should make
> trade-offs between correctness and other factors (like performance):
>
> E.g., instructions without control bits, to be 100% compliant with CPU
> spec, in theory, VMMs can trap/decode every instruction and inject #UD
> if a guest tries to use some instructions it shouldn't.

This is the virtualization hole. IMHO, they are different things.

Pass through MSR_IA32_SPEC_CTRL was introduced in commit d28b387fb74d 
("KVM/VMX: Allow direct access to MSR_IA32_SPEC_CTRL"). At that time 
there was only a few bits defined, and the changelog called out that

  No attempt is made to handle STIBP here, intentionally. Filtering
  STIBP may be added in a future patch, which may require trapping all
  writes if we don't want to pass it through directly to the guest.

Per my undesrstanding, it implied that we need to re-visit it when more 
bits added instead of following the pass-through design siliently.