[PATCH v13 09/35] KVM: Add KVM_EXIT_MEMORY_FAULT exit to report faults to userspace

Huang, Kai kai.huang at intel.com
Thu Nov 2 02:35:35 PDT 2023


On Thu, 2023-11-02 at 03:17 +0000, Huang, Kai wrote:
> On Wed, 2023-11-01 at 10:36 -0700, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > On Wed, Nov 01, 2023, Kai Huang wrote:
> > > 
> > > > +7.34 KVM_CAP_MEMORY_FAULT_INFO
> > > > +------------------------------
> > > > +
> > > > +:Architectures: x86
> > > > +:Returns: Informational only, -EINVAL on direct KVM_ENABLE_CAP.
> > > > +
> > > > +The presence of this capability indicates that KVM_RUN will fill
> > > > +kvm_run.memory_fault if KVM cannot resolve a guest page fault VM-Exit, e.g. if
> > > > +there is a valid memslot but no backing VMA for the corresponding host virtual
> > > > +address.
> > > > +
> > > > +The information in kvm_run.memory_fault is valid if and only if KVM_RUN returns
> > > > +an error with errno=EFAULT or errno=EHWPOISON *and* kvm_run.exit_reason is set
> > > > +to KVM_EXIT_MEMORY_FAULT.
> > > 
> > > IIUC returning -EFAULT or whatever -errno is sort of KVM internal
> > > implementation.
> > 
> > The errno that is returned to userspace is ABI.  In KVM, it's a _very_ poorly
> > defined ABI for the vast majority of ioctls(), but it's still technically ABI.
> > KVM gets away with being cavalier with errno because the vast majority of errors
> > are considered fatal by userespace, i.e. in most cases, userspace simply doesn't
> > care about the exact errno.
> > 
> > A good example is KVM_RUN with -EINTR; if KVM were to return something other than
> > -EINTR on a pending signal or vcpu->run->immediate_exit, userspace would fall over.
> > 
> > > Is it better to relax the validity of kvm_run.memory_fault when
> > > KVM_RUN returns any -errno?
> > 
> > Not unless there's a need to do so, and if there is then we can update the
> > documentation accordingly.  If KVM's ABI is that kvm_run.memory_fault is valid
> > for any errno, then KVM would need to purge kvm_run.exit_reason super early in
> > KVM_RUN, e.g. to prevent an -EINTR return due to immediate_exit from being
> > misinterpreted as KVM_EXIT_MEMORY_FAULT.  And purging exit_reason super early is
> > subtly tricky because KVM's (again, poorly documented) ABI is that *some* exit
> > reasons are preserved across KVM_RUN with vcpu->run->immediate_exit (or with a
> > pending signal).
> > 
> > https://lore.kernel.org/all/ZFFbwOXZ5uI%2Fgdaf@google.com
> > 
> > 
> 
> Agreed with not to relax to any errno.  However using -EFAULT as part of ABI
> definition seems a little bit dangerous, e.g., someone could accidentally or
> mistakenly return -EFAULT in KVM_RUN at early time and/or in a completely
> different code path, etc.  -EINTR has well defined meaning, but -EFAULT (which
> is "Bad address") seems doesn't but I am not sure either. :-)
> 
> One example is, for backing VMA with VM_IO | VM_PFNMAP, hva_to_pfn() returns
> KVM_PFN_ERR_FAULT when the kernel cannot get a valid PFN (e.g. when SGX vepc
> fault handler failed to allocate EPC) and kvm_handle_error_pfn() will just
> return -EFAULT.  If kvm_run.exit_reason isn't purged early then is it possible
> to have some issue here?
> 

Also, regardless whether -EFAULT is too ambiguous to be part of ABI, could you
elaborate the EHWPOISON part?  IIUC KVM can already handle the case of poisoned
page by sending signal to user app: 

	static int kvm_handle_error_pfn(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, 
			struct kvm_page_fault *fault)                                               
	{       
		...

       		if (fault->pfn == KVM_PFN_ERR_HWPOISON) {
              		kvm_send_hwpoison_signal(fault->slot, fault->gfn);
                	return RET_PF_RETRY;                                          
        	}
	}

And (sorry to hijack) I am thinking whether "SGX vepc unable to allocate EPC"
can also use this memory_fault mechanism.  Currently as mentioned above when
vepc fault handler cannot allocate EPC page KVM returns -EFAULT to Qemu, and
Qemu prints ...

	...: Bad address
	<dump guest cpu registers>

... which is nonsense.

If we can use memory_fault.flags (or is 'fault_reason' a better name?) to carry
a specific value for EPC to let Qemu know and Qemu can then do more reasonable
things.



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