[PATCH v5 0/9] iommufd: Enable noiommu mode for cdev
From: Jacob Pan
Date: Mon May 11 2026 - 14:41:27 EST
VFIO's unsafe_noiommu_mode has long provided a way for userspace drivers
to operate on platforms lacking a hardware IOMMU. Today, IOMMUFD also
supports No-IOMMU mode for group-based devices under vfio_compat mode.
However, IOMMUFD's native character device (cdev) does not yet support
No-IOMMU mode, which is the purpose of this patch.
In summary, we have:
|-------------------------+------+---------------|
| Device access mode | VFIO | IOMMUFD |
|-------------------------+------+---------------|
| group /dev/vfio/$GROUP | Yes | Yes |
|-------------------------+------+---------------|
| cdev /dev/vfio/devices/ | No | This patch |
|-------------------------+------+---------------|
Beyond enabling cdev for IOMMUFD, this patch also addresses the following
deficiencies in the current No-IOMMU mode suggested by Jason[1]:
- Devices operating under No-IOMMU mode are limited to device-level UAPI
access, without container or IOAS-level capabilities. Consequently,
user-space drivers lack structured mechanisms for page pinning and often
resort to mlock(), which is less robust than pin_user_pages() used for
devices backed by a physical IOMMU. For example, mlock() does not prevent
page migration.
- There is no architectural mechanism for obtaining physical addresses for
DMA. As a workaround, user-space drivers frequently rely on /proc/pagemap
tricks or hardcoded values.
By allowing noiommu device access to IOMMUFD IOAS and HWPT objects, this
patch brings No-IOMMU mode closer to full citizenship within the IOMMU
subsystem. In addition to addressing the two deficiencies mentioned above,
the expectation is that it will also enable No-IOMMU devices to seamlessly
participate in live update sessions via KHO [2].
Furthermore, these devices will use the IOMMUFD-based ownership checking model for
VFIO_DEVICE_PCI_HOT_RESET, eliminating the need for an iommufd_access object
as required in a previous attempt [3].
ChangeLog:
V5:
- Split CONFIG_VFIO_NOIOMMU into CONFIG_VFIO_GROUP_NOIOMMU and
CONFIG_VFIO_CDEV_NOIOMMU so cdev noiommu is independent of
VFIO_GROUP (Alex)
- Add CAP_SYS_RAWIO check for cdev open and bind under noiommu,
security parity with group noiommu (Alex)
- Add IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_IOMMUFD_NOIOMMU) guard in
iommufd_device_is_noiommu() to prevent noiommu bind when feature
is disabled
- Add prep patch to tolerate NULL group for cdev noiommu devices
when CONFIG_VFIO_GROUP_NOIOMMU is not set [7/9]
- Rename IOCTL to IOMMUFD_CMD_IOAS_NOIOMMU_GET_PA to be more
specific (Kevin)
- Simplify iommufd_device_is_noiommu, use iommufd_bind_noiommu
helper (Kevin, Yi)
- Move IOMMU cap check under iommufd_bind_iommu() (Yi)
- Fix next_iova exceeding iopt_area_last_iova in GET_PA (Alex)
- Fix const hwpt, copyright date, typo in moved comment (Kevin)
- Add Reviewed-by tags
- Squash noiommu cdev selftest fix into selftest patch
- Drop DSA selftest patch
- Details in each patch changelog.
V4:
- Fix various corner cases pointed out by (Sashiko)
Details in each patch changelog.
V3:
- Improve error handling [3/10] (Mostafa)
- Simplify vfio_device_is_noiommu logic and merged in [6/10] (Mostafa)
- Add comment to explain the design difference over the legacy noiommu
VFIO code.[1/10]
V2:
- Fix build dependency by adding IOMMU_SUPPORT in [8/11]
- Add an optimization to scan beyond the first page for a contiguous
physical address range and return its length instead of a single
page.[4/11]
Since RFC[4]:
- Abandoned dummy iommu driver approach as patch 1-3 absorbed the
changes into iommufd.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-iommu/20250603175403.GA407344@xxxxxxxxxx/
[2] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20251027134430.00007e46@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
[3] https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20230522115751.326947-1-yi.l.liu@xxxxxxxxx/
[4] https://lore.kernel.org/linux-iommu/20251201173012.18371-1-jacob.pan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/
Future cleanup: consolidate all CONFIG_IOMMUFD_NOIOMMU code
(iopt_get_phys, iommufd_ioas_noiommu_get_pa, iommufd_noiommu_ops) into
hwpt_noiommu.c to eliminate #ifdef guards from ioas.c and io_pagetable.c.
Signed-off-by: Jacob Pan <jacob.pan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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2.43.0