[virtio-dev] Re: [Qemu-devel] [virtio-dev] [PATCH v3 0/7] Vhost-pci for inter-VM communication

["Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@redhat.com>]

On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 05:29:14PM +0000, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 4:47 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 04:29:45PM +0000, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> >> On Thu, Dec 7, 2017 at 2:02 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> wrote:
> >> > On Thu, Dec 07, 2017 at 01:08:04PM +0000, Stefan Hajnoczi wrote:
> >> >> Instead of responding individually to these points, I hope this will
> >> >> explain my perspective.  Let me know if you do want individual
> >> >> responses, I'm happy to talk more about the points above but I think
> >> >> the biggest difference is our perspective on this:
> >> >>
> >> >> Existing vhost-user slave code should be able to run on top of
> >> >> vhost-pci.  For example, QEMU's
> >> >> contrib/vhost-user-scsi/vhost-user-scsi.c should work inside the guest
> >> >> with only minimal changes to the source file (i.e. today it explicitly
> >> >> opens a UNIX domain socket and that should be done by libvhost-user
> >> >> instead).  It shouldn't be hard to add vhost-pci vfio support to
> >> >> contrib/libvhost-user/ alongside the existing UNIX domain socket code.
> >> >>
> >> >> This seems pretty easy to achieve with the vhost-pci PCI adapter that
> >> >> I've described but I'm not sure how to implement libvhost-user on top
> >> >> of vhost-pci vfio if the device doesn't expose the vhost-user
> >> >> protocol.
> >> >>
> >> >> I think this is a really important goal.  Let's use a single
> >> >> vhost-user software stack instead of creating a separate one for guest
> >> >> code only.
> >> >>
> >> >> Do you agree that the vhost-user software stack should be shared
> >> >> between host userspace and guest code as much as possible?
> >> >
> >> >
> >> >
> >> > The sharing you propose is not necessarily practical because the security goals
> >> > of the two are different.
> >> >
> >> > It seems that the best motivation presentation is still the original rfc
> >> >
> >> > http://virtualization.linux-foundation.narkive.com/A7FkzAgp/rfc-vhost-user-enhancements-for-vm2vm-communication
> >> >
> >> > So comparing with vhost-user iotlb handling is different:
> >> >
> >> > With vhost-user guest trusts the vhost-user backend on the host.
> >> >
> >> > With vhost-pci we can strive to limit the trust to qemu only.
> >> > The switch running within a VM does not have to be trusted.
> >>
> >> Can you give a concrete example?
> >>
> >> I have an idea about what you're saying but it may be wrong:
> >>
> >> Today the iotlb mechanism in vhost-user does not actually enforce
> >> memory permissions.  The vhost-user slave has full access to mmapped
> >> memory regions even when iotlb is enabled.  Currently the iotlb just
> >> adds an indirection layer but no real security.  (Is this correct?)
> >
> > Not exactly. iotlb protects against malicious drivers within guest.
> > But yes, not against a vhost-user driver on the host.
> >
> >> Are you saying the vhost-pci device code in QEMU should enforce iotlb
> >> permissions so the vhost-user slave guest only has access to memory
> >> regions that are allowed by the iotlb?
> >
> > Yes.
> 
> Okay, thanks for confirming.
> 
> This can be supported by the approach I've described.  The vhost-pci
> QEMU code has control over the BAR memory so it can prevent the guest
> from accessing regions that are not allowed by the iotlb.
> 
> Inside the guest the vhost-user slave still has the memory region
> descriptions and sends iotlb messages.  This is completely compatible
> with the libvirt-user APIs and existing vhost-user slave code can run
> fine.  The only unique thing is that guest accesses to memory regions
> not allowed by the iotlb do not work because QEMU has prevented it.

I don't think this can work since suddenly you need
to map full IOMMU address space into BAR.

Besides, this means implementing iotlb in both qemu and guest.

> If better performance is needed then it might be possible to optimize
> this interface by handling most or even all of the iotlb stuff in QEMU
> vhost-pci code and not exposing it to the vhost-user slave in the
> guest.  But it doesn't change the fact that the vhost-user protocol
> can be used and the same software stack works.

For one, the iotlb part would be out of scope then.
Instead you would have code to offset from BAR.

> Do you have a concrete example of why sharing the same vhost-user
> software stack inside the guest can't work?

With enough dedication some code might be shared.  OTOH reusing virtio
gains you a ready feature negotiation and discovery protocol.

I'm not convinced which has more value, and the second proposal
has been implemented already.



> >> and QEMU generally doesn't
> >> implement things this way.
> >
> > Not sure what does this mean.
> 
> It's the reason why virtio-9p has a separate virtfs-proxy-helper
> program.  Root is needed to set file uid/gids.  Instead of running
> QEMU as root, there is a separate helper process that handles the
> privileged operations.  It slows things down and makes the codebase
> larger but it prevents the guest from getting root in case of QEMU
> bugs.
>
> The reason why VMs are considered more secure than containers is
> because of the extra level of isolation provided by running device
> emulation in an unprivileged userspace process.  If you change this
> model then QEMU loses the "security in depth" advantage.
> 
> Stefan

I don't see where vhost-pci needs QEMU to run as root though.

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