Re: [PATCH v5 0/9] Enable Sub-page Write Protection Support

From: Jim Mattson
Date: Thu Oct 10 2019 - 17:43:04 EST


On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 1:52 AM Yang Weijiang <weijiang.yang@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> EPT-Based Sub-Page write Protection(SPP)is a HW capability which allows
> Virtual Machine Monitor(VMM) to specify write-permission for guest
> physical memory at a sub-page(128 byte) granularity. When this
> capability is enabled, the CPU enforces write-access check for sub-pages
> within a 4KB page.
>
> The feature is targeted to provide fine-grained memory protection for
> usages such as device virtualization, memory check-point and VM
> introspection etc.
>
> SPP is active when the "sub-page write protection" (bit 23) is 1 in
> Secondary VM-Execution Controls. The feature is backed with a Sub-Page
> Permission Table(SPPT), SPPT is referenced via a 64-bit control field
> called Sub-Page Permission Table Pointer (SPPTP) which contains a
> 4K-aligned physical address.
>
> To enable SPP for certain physical page, the gfn should be first mapped
> to a 4KB entry, then set bit 61 of the corresponding EPT leaf entry.
> While HW walks EPT, if bit 61 is set, it traverses SPPT with the guset
> physical address to find out the sub-page permissions at the leaf entry.
> If the corresponding bit is set, write to sub-page is permitted,
> otherwise, SPP induced EPT violation is generated.

How do you handle sub-page permissions for instructions emulated by kvm?