[RFC PATCH v2 00/11] KVM: Allow alternative providers of guest_memfd backed by PFNMAP memory
From: David Woodhouse
Date: Mon Jul 20 2026 - 07:20:40 EST
For dedicated hosting environments, there are a few reasons to prefer
using external PFNMAP memory for guests, rather than kernel-managed
memory:
• No struct page overheads
• Easily managed in 1GiB pages (or larger chunks); no fragmentation/THP
• Faster kexec/KHO live update (every millisecond spent faffing around
with memory management is an extra millisecond of steal time taken
from guests)
Today, there is only one implementation of guest_memfd: the internal
shmem-based page cache in virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c. This series allows
for other code to provide "a guest_memfd". This is an early path-
finding proof of concept tested with AMD SEV-SNP as well as non-CoCo
guests on x86 and arm64. I'm planning to build a memory-based file
system which gives files for both guest_memfd as well as memory-based
storage to allow things like userspace VM and orchestrator state
to be passed over KHO/kexec.
This series lifts guest_memfd's operations into a small ops struct and
converts KVM's own gmem to use it, so it becomes one implementation
among peers rather than the only game in town. It also adapts the
SEV-SNP fast paths to page-less operation, plumbs iommufd to map a
guest_memfd-backing dma-buf as CPU RAM (not MMIO), and adds the
provider->KVM revocation primitive that makes overcommit-style reclaim
possible.
It's largely AI-built at the moment. My main design concerns are around
how we tell that a given file is "a guest_memfd", and how we plug into
IOMMUFD. Presenting a dma-buf was the less intrusive choice because that
path already has support for taking pages away, but I'm less convinced
that it's the cleaner choice in the long term.
I'll continue to bikeshed it myself, but this is at least functional
enough to show the direction and solicit further opinions...
https://git.infradead.org/?p=users/dwmw2/linux.git;a=shortlog;h=gmem-provider-v2
Changes since v1 (mostly Sashiko feedback):
Core (KVM / SEV):
- populate: drop the transient page reference after ->post_populate()
rather than before, so the callback still sees the ref it relies on
- kvm_gmem_invalidate_range(): walk every address space and all
memslots in the range, not just address space 0 / a single slot
- SEV: the guest_memfd cache flush hit a WARN_ON_ONCE on a failed
temporary mapping; that path is reachable from userspace (hole-punch),
so downgrade to pr_warn_ratelimited to avoid a panic_on_warn DoS
- Export file_is_kvm() (EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL) so an external provider can
confirm the fd handed to it at setup really is a KVM instance
Sample provider (samples/kvm/gmem_provider.c):
- Serialize per-fd state (info->kvm, bound_slot, present bitmap) under a
new info->lock; v1 accessed info->kvm without locking, racing
bind/unbind against release
- Validate setup.kvm_fd via file_is_kvm() before using it
- Fix bitmap_zalloc(unsigned int) truncation -> kvzalloc with
BITS_TO_LONGS
- Fix integer underflow in SET_PRESENT when start_index < pgoff
- gmem_release: zap active guest mappings + clear slot->gmem.file before
freeing the backing
- Pin THIS_MODULE while a provider fd is open
- gmem_mmap: refuse if the fd was not created mmap-capable
- gmem_max_order: clamp by the absent bitmap
- Bind/unbind: symmetric psmash + rmp_make_shared with proper 2MiB
alignment
Selftests:
- Revoke test: assert the revoked access faults unconditionally
- iommufd test: mark the range KVM_MEMORY_ATTRIBUTE_PRIVATE so the guest
actually exercises the provider path rather than the shared HVA mmap
- NVMe DMA test: read the vendor ID from PCI config and add compiler
barriers before the doorbell writes
Connor Williamson (1):
KVM: SEV: Remove struct page dependency from SNP gmem paths
David Woodhouse (10):
KVM: selftests: sev_smoke_test: Only run VM types the host offers
KVM: selftests: sev_init2_tests: Derive SEV availability from KVM
KVM: guest_memfd: Introduce guest memory ops and route native gmem through them
iommufd: Look up private-interconnect phys via exporter symbols
iommufd: Plumb dma-buf memory-type (RAM vs MMIO) through the phys map
KVM: guest_memfd: Add ops-driven page revocation
samples/kvm: Add guest_memfd backing sample
selftests/kvm: gmem_provider KVM-only tests
selftests/kvm: gmem_provider iommufd tests
samples/kvm, selftests/kvm: Allow the gmem_provider NVMe DMA test on arm64
arch/x86/kvm/Makefile | 5 +-
arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c | 93 ++-
arch/x86/virt/svm/sev.c | 27 +-
drivers/iommu/iommufd/io_pagetable.h | 7 +
drivers/iommu/iommufd/pages.c | 49 +-
include/linux/kvm_host.h | 91 +++
samples/Kconfig | 18 +
samples/Makefile | 1 +
samples/kvm/Makefile | 2 +
samples/kvm/gmem_provider.c | 772 +++++++++++++++++++++
samples/kvm/gmem_provider.h | 53 ++
tools/testing/selftests/kvm/Makefile.kvm | 6 +
.../selftests/kvm/gmem_provider_nvme_dma_test.c | 376 ++++++++++
.../kvm/x86/gmem_provider_hugepage_test.c | 130 ++++
.../selftests/kvm/x86/gmem_provider_iommufd_test.c | 158 +++++
.../selftests/kvm/x86/gmem_provider_revoke_test.c | 135 ++++
.../testing/selftests/kvm/x86/gmem_provider_test.c | 195 ++++++
.../selftests/kvm/x86/gmem_provider_vfio_test.c | 134 ++++
tools/testing/selftests/kvm/x86/sev_init2_tests.c | 16 +-
tools/testing/selftests/kvm/x86/sev_smoke_test.c | 9 +-
virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c | 391 +++++++++--
virt/kvm/kvm_main.c | 8 +-
virt/kvm/kvm_mm.h | 4 +-
23 files changed, 2577 insertions(+), 103 deletions(-)