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From:   Christophe de Dinechin <christophe.de.dinechin@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC] KVM: x86: tell guests if the exposed SMT topology is
 trustworthy
In-Reply-To: <713ECF67-6A6C-4956-8AC6-7F4C05961328@oracle.com>
Date:   Fri, 8 Nov 2019 16:35:17 +0100
Cc:     Christophe de Dinechin <christophe.de.dinechin@gmail.com>,
        Sean Christopherson <sean.j.christopherson@intel.com>,
        Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@redhat.com>,
        KVM list <kvm@vger.kernel.org>, x86@kernel.org,
        Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
        Jim Mattson <jmattson@google.com>,
        open list <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
        "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>,
        "Peter Zijlstra (Intel)" <peterz@infradead.org>
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References: <20191105161737.21395-1-vkuznets@redhat.com>
 <20191105193749.GA20225@linux.intel.com>
 <20191105232500.GA25887@linux.intel.com>
 <943488A8-2DD7-4471-B3C7-9F21A0B0BCF9@dinechin.org>
 <713ECF67-6A6C-4956-8AC6-7F4C05961328@oracle.com>
To:     Liran Alon <liran.alon@oracle.com>
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> On 7 Nov 2019, at 16:02, Liran Alon <liran.alon@oracle.com> wrote:
>=20
>=20
>=20
>> On 7 Nov 2019, at 16:00, Christophe de Dinechin =
<christophe.de.dinechin@gmail.com> wrote:
>>=20
>=20
>>=20
>> I share that concern about the naming, although I do see some
>> value in exposing the cpu_smt_possible() result. I think it=E2=80=99s =
easier
>> to state that something does not work than to state something does
>> work.
>>=20
>> Also, with respect to mitigation, we may want to split the two cases
>> that Paolo outlined, i.e. have KVM_HINTS_REALTIME,
>> KVM_HINTS_CORES_CROSSTALK and
>> KVM_HINTS_CORES_LEAKING,
>> where CORES_CROSSTALKS indicates there may be some
>> cross-talk between what the guest thinks are isolated cores,
>> and CORES_LEAKING indicates that cores may leak data
>> to some other guest.
>>=20
>> The problem with my approach is that it is shouting =E2=80=9Cdon=E2=80=99=
t trust me=E2=80=9D
>> a bit too loudly.
>=20
> I don=E2=80=99t see a value in exposing CORES_LEAKING to guest. As =
guest have nothing to do with it.

The guest could display / expose the information to guest sysadmins
and admin tools (e.g. through /proc).

While the kernel cannot mitigate, a higher-level product could for =
example
have a policy about which workloads can be deployed on a system which
may leak data to other VMs.

Christophe