Re: [PATCH v2] KVM: VMX: Enable Notify VM exit

From: Sean Christopherson
Date: Thu Sep 02 2021 - 12:36:39 EST


On Thu, Sep 02, 2021, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 03, 2021, Xiaoyao Li wrote:
> > On 8/2/2021 11:46 PM, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > > > > > @@ -5642,6 +5653,31 @@ static int handle_bus_lock_vmexit(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu)
> > > > > > return 0;
> > > > > > }
> > > > > > +static int handle_notify(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu)
> > > > > > +{
> > > > > > + unsigned long exit_qual = vmx_get_exit_qual(vcpu);
> > > > > > +
> > > > > > + if (!(exit_qual & NOTIFY_VM_CONTEXT_INVALID)) {
> > > > >
> > > > > What does CONTEXT_INVALID mean? The ISE doesn't provide any information whatsoever.
> > > >
> > > > It means whether the VM context is corrupted and not valid in the VMCS.
> > >
> > > Well that's a bit terrifying. Under what conditions can the VM context become
> > > corrupted? E.g. if the context can be corrupted by an inopportune NOTIFY exit,
> > > then KVM needs to be ultra conservative as a false positive could be fatal to a
> > > guest.
> > >
> >
> > Short answer is no case will set the VM_CONTEXT_INVALID bit.
>
> But something must set it, otherwise it wouldn't exist. The condition(s) under
> which it can be set matters because it affects how KVM should respond. E.g. if
> the guest can trigger VM_CONTEXT_INVALID at will, then we should probably treat
> it as a shutdown and reset the VMCS.

Oh, and "shutdown" would be relative to the VMCS, i.e. if L2 triggers a NOTIFY
exit with VM_CONTEXT_INVALID then KVM shouldn't kill the entire VM. The least
awful option would probably be to synthesize a shutdown VM-Exit to L1. That
won't communicate to L1 that vmcs12 state is stale/bogus, but I don't see any way
to handle that via an existing VM-Exit reason :-/

> But if VM_CONTEXT_INVALID can occur if and only if there's a hardware/ucode
> issue, then we can do:
>
> if (KVM_BUG_ON(exit_qual & NOTIFY_VM_CONTEXT_INVALID, vcpu->kvm))
> return -EIO;
>
> Either way, to enable this by default we need some form of documentation that
> describes what conditions lead to VM_CONTEXT_INVALID.