[PATCH v4 17/19] arm64: KVM: add SGI generation register emulation

Andre Przywara andre.przywara at arm.com
Wed Dec 3 09:50:51 PST 2014


On 30/11/14 08:45, Christoffer Dall wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 03:40:12PM +0000, Andre Przywara wrote:
>> Hej Christoffer,
>>
>> On 25/11/14 11:03, Christoffer Dall wrote:
>>> Hi Andre,
>>>
>>> On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 04:37:58PM +0000, Andre Przywara wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> On 23/11/14 15:08, Christoffer Dall wrote:
>>>>> On Fri, Nov 14, 2014 at 10:08:01AM +0000, Andre Przywara wrote:
>>>>>> While the generation of a (virtual) inter-processor interrupt (SGI)
>>>>>> on a GICv2 works by writing to a MMIO register, GICv3 uses the system
>>>>>> register ICC_SGI1R_EL1 to trigger them.
>>>>>> Trap that register on ARM64 hosts and handle it in a new handler
>>>>>> function in the GICv3 emulation code.
>>>>>
>>>>> Did you reorder something or does my previous comment still apply that
>>>>> you're not enabling trapping yet, you're just adding the handler - those
>>>>> are two different things.
>>>>
>>>> Yes, I can fix the wording.
>>>>
>>>>> You sort of left my question about access_gic_sgi() not checking if the
>>>>> gicv3 is presetn hanging from the last thread, but I think I'm
>>>>> understanding properly now, that as long as you're not setting the
>>>>> ICC_SRE_EL2.Enable = 1, then we'll never get here, right?
>>>>
>>>> Right, that is the idea. Just to make sure that I got this right from
>>>> the discussion the other day: We will not trap to EL2 as long as
>>>> ICC_SRE_EL2.Enable is 0 - which it should still be at this point, right?
>>>
>>> No, when ICC_SRE_EL2.Enable is 0, then Non-secure EL1 access to
>>> ICC_SRE_EL1 trap to EL2 (See Section 5.7.39 in the spec), which means
>>> that accesses to the ICC_SGIx registers will cause an undefined
>>> exception in the guest because we set ICC_SRE_EL1.SRE to 0 for the
>>> guest and the guest cannot change this.
>>>
>>> Now, when we set ICC_SRE_EL2.Enable to 1, then the guest can set
>>> ICC_SRE_EL1.SRE to 1 (and we also happen to reset it to 1), and we will
>>> indeed trap on guest access to the ICC_SGIx registers, because all
>>> virtual accesses to these registers trap.
>>>
>>> (Going back and checking where 'virtual accesses' is defined in the spec
>>> left me somewhere without any results, but I am guessing that because we
>>> set the ICH_HCR_EL2.En to 1, all accesses will be deemed virtual
>>> accesses, maybe the spec should be clarfied on this matter?).
>>>
>>> Anyhow, to get back to my original question, getting here requires
>>> a situation where the guest copy of the ICC_SRE_EL1.SRE is 1, which we
>>> only allow when we have properly initialized the GICv3 data structures.
>>
>> So to summarize (and check) this: There is no real issue at this point?
>> And the code is totally fine after 19/19?
> 
> There is no issue at this point, no.
> 
>>
>> Would this kind of problem actually matter _inside_ a patch series? To
>> trigger an issue, we would need a bogus guest and bogus userland
>> (because at this point neither of them would see/inject a GICv3 FDT
>> node). I'd assume that running a kernel at this point is just for
>> debugging/bisecting? Where you wouldn't care about every corner case of
>> execution?
> 
> The argument about bogus guests / fdts should *never* be considered in
> the context of these discussions.  If we have code that looks like the
> guest can kill the host, or do a NULL pointer dereference, then we need
> to address it.
> 
> Your point about it being inside a patch series, sure, it's unlikely
> that people will run this, but I'm reviewing this patch right now, and
> honestly not considering how this changes in the subsequent patch.  For
> this sort of thing, if we were leaving a gaping hole open, that would at
> least require a clear note in the commit message on why we're doing it.

I see, makes sense.
So I thought about adding a line like this to the very beginning of
vgic_v3_dispatch_sgi(). This would cover all cases of spurious traps.
Does that sound useful as a security precaution (though unneeded as
described)?
Shall there be a warning before the return?

+	/* only valid for an initialized VGICv3 */
+	if (!vgic_initialized(kvm)  ||
+	    kvm->arch.vgic.vgic_model != KVM_DEV_TYPE_ARM_VGIC_V3)
+		return;

> Hopefully you understood and agreed with my deduction about the various
> SRE settings above though?

Yes, I got this. We are safe as long as ICC_SRE_EL1.SRE is 0, which is
true until patch 19/19 allows userland to request a GICv3 guest, which
will force it to 1.
I also tested this explicitly, starting with patch 17/19 (for the host
kernel) and going over the remaining two as well. Starting a guest with
GICv2 and accessing ICC_SRE_EL1 and ICC_SGI1R_EL1 from a custom module
inside the guest will always keep ICC_SRE_EL1.SRE to 0 (thanks to your
recent trap patch), accesses to ICC_SGI1R_EL1 provoke an #UNDEF
exception in the guest. The host was never bothered.
Creating a guest with a GICv3 was only successful after patch 19/19, and
ICC_SRE_EL1.SRE couldn't be cleared.

So I consider this topic done.

Cheers,
Andre.



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