Re: [PATCH] VFIO driver: Non-privileged user level PCI drivers

[Tom Lyon <pugs@lyon-about.com>]

On Sunday 06 June 2010 02:54:51 am Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 03, 2010 at 02:41:38PM -0700, Tom Lyon wrote:
> > OK, in the interest of making progress, I am about to embark on the following:
> > 
> > 1. Create a user-iommu-domain driver - opening it will give a new empty domain.
> >     Ultimately this can also populate sysfs with the state of its world, which would
> >     also be a good addition to the base iommu stuff.
> >     If someone closes the fd while in use, the domain stays valid anyway until users
> >     drop off.
> > 
> > 2. Add DOMAIN_SET and DOMAIN_UNSET ioctls to the vfio driver.  Require that
> >    a domain be set before using the VFIO_DMA_MAP_IOVA ioctl
> 
> Require domain to be set before you allow any access to the device:
> mmap, write, read.  IMO this is the only safe way to make sure userspace
> does not corrupt memory, and this removes the need to special-case
> MSI memory, play with bus master enable and hope it can be cleared without
> reset, etc.

Michael - the light bulb finally lit for me and I now understand what you've been
saying the past few weeks.  Of course you're right - we need iommu set before any
register access.  I had thought that was done by default but now I see that the 
dma_map_sg routine only attaches to the iommu on demand.

So I will torpedo the MAP_ANYWHERE stuff. I'd like to keep the MAP_IOVA ioctl
with the vfio fd so that the user can still do everything with one fd. I'm thinking the
fd opens and iommu bindings could be done in a program before spinning out the
program with the user driver.
> 
> > (this is the one
> >    that KVM wants).
> 
> Not sure I understand. I think that MAP should be done on the domain,
> not the device, this handles pinning pages correctly and
> this way you don't need any special checks.
> 
> >    However, the VFIO_DMA_MAP_ANYWHERE ioctl is the one
> >    which uses the dma_sg interface which has no expicit control of domains. I
> >    intend to keep it the way it is, but expect only non-hypervisor programs would
> >    want to use it.
> 
> If we support MAP_IOVA, why is MAP_ANYWHERE useful? Can't
> non-hypervisors just pick an address?
> 
> > 3. Clean up the docs and other nits that folks have found.
> > 
> > Comments? 
>