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Date:   Wed, 15 Apr 2020 11:26:39 +0200
From:   Claudio Imbrenda <imbrenda@linux.ibm.com>
To:     Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>
Cc:     linux-next@vger.kernel.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org,
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        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-s390@vger.kernel.org,
        Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
        Sean Christopherson <sean.j.christopherson@intel.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v4 2/2] mm/gup/writeback: add callbacks for inaccessible
 pages
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On Tue, 14 Apr 2020 11:50:16 -0700
Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com> wrote:

> On 4/14/20 9:03 AM, Claudio Imbrenda wrote:
> > On Mon, 13 Apr 2020 13:22:24 -0700
> > Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com> wrote:
> >   
> >> On 3/6/20 5:25 AM, Claudio Imbrenda wrote:  
> >>> On s390x the function is not supposed to fail, so it is ok to use
> >>> a WARN_ON on failure. If we ever need some more finegrained
> >>> handling we can tackle this when we know the details.    
> >>
> >> Could you explain a bit why the function can't fail?  
> > 
> > the concept of "making accessible" is only to make sure that
> > accessing the page will not trigger faults or I/O or DMA errors. in
> > general it does not mean freely accessing the content of the page
> > in cleartext. 
> > 
> > on s390x, protected guest pages can be shared. the guest has to
> > actively share its pages, and in that case those pages are both
> > part of the protected VM and freely accessible by the host.  
> 
> Oh, that's interesting.
> 
> It sounds like there are three separate concepts:
> 1. Protection
> 2. Sharing
> 3. Accessibility
> 
> Protected pages may be shared and the request of the guest.
> Shared pages' plaintext can be accessed by the host.  For unshared
> pages, the host can only see ciphertext.
> 
> I wonder if Documentation/virt/kvm/s390-pv.rst can be beefed up with
> some of this information.  It seems a bit sparse on this topic.

that is definitely something that can be fixed.

I will improve the documentation and make sure it properly explains
all the details of how protected VMs work on s390x.

> As it stands, if I were modifying generic code, I don't think I'd have
> even a chance of getting an arch_make_page_accessible() in the right
> spot.
> 
> > in our case "making the page accessible" means:  
> ...
> >  - if the page was not shared, first encrypt it and then make it
> >    accessible to the host (both operations performed securely and
> >    atomically by the hardware)  
> 
> What happens to the guest's view of the page when this happens?  Does
> it keep seeing plaintext?
> 
> > then the page can be swapped out, or used for direct I/O (obviously
> > if you do I/O on a page that was not shared, you cannot expect good
> > things to happen, since you basically corrupt the memory of the
> > guest).  
> 
> So why even allow access to the encrypted contents if the host can't
> do anything useful with it?  Is there some reason for going to the
> trouble of encrypting it and exposing it to the host?

you should not overwrite it, but you can/should write it out verbatim,
e.g. for swap

> > on s390x performing I/O directly on protected pages results in (in
> > practice) unrecoverable I/O errors, so we want to avoid it at all
> > costs.  
> 
> This is understandable, but we usually steer I/O operations in places
> like the DMA API, not in the core VM.
> 
> We *have* the concept of pages to which I/O can't be done.  There are
> plenty of crippled devices where we have to bounce data into a low
> buffer before it can go where we really want it to.  I think the AMD
> SEV patches do this, for instance.
> 
> > accessing protected pages from the CPU triggers an exception that
> > can be handled (and we do handle it, in fact)
> > 
> > now imagine a buggy or malicious qemu process crashing the whole
> > machine just because it did I/O to/from a protected page. we
> > clearly don't want that.  
> 
> Is DMA disallowed to *all* protected pages?  Even pages which the
> guest has explicitly shared with the host?
> 
> 
> >>> @@ -2807,6 +2807,13 @@ int __test_set_page_writeback(struct page
> >>> *page, bool keep_write) inc_zone_page_state(page,
> >>> NR_ZONE_WRITE_PENDING); }
> >>>  	unlock_page_memcg(page);
> >>> +	access_ret = arch_make_page_accessible(page);
> >>> +	/*
> >>> +	 * If writeback has been triggered on a page that cannot
> >>> be made
> >>> +	 * accessible, it is too late to recover here.
> >>> +	 */
> >>> +	VM_BUG_ON_PAGE(access_ret != 0, page);
> >>> +
> >>>  	return ret;
> >>>  
> >>>  }    
> >>
> >> This seems like a really odd place to do this.  Writeback is
> >> specific to block I/O.  I would have thought there were other
> >> kinds of devices that matter, not just block devices.  
> > 
> > well, yes and no. for writeback (block I/O and swap) this is the
> > right place. at this point we know that the page is present and
> > nobody else has started doing I/O yet, and I/O will happen
> > soon-ish. so we make the page accessible. there is no turning back
> > here, unlike pinning. we are not allowed to fail, we can't   
> 
> This description sounds really incomplete to me.
> 
> Not all swap involved device I/O.  For instance, zswap doesn't involve
> any devices.  Would zswap need this hook?

please feel free to write to me privately if you have any further
questions or doubts :)


best regards,

Claudio Imbrenda