Re: [PATCH RFC 2/2] xen/x86: Introduce XEN_SYSCTL_cpuid hypercall

[Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>]

On 27/02/14 11:58, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>> On 27.02.14 at 12:11, Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com> wrote:
>> which permits a toolstack to execute an arbitrary cpuid instruction on a
>> specified physical cpu.
> For one - is it a good idea to expose the unprocessed CPUID to
> any guest code? After all even the Dom0 kernel only gets to see
> processed values, and the fact the without CPUID faulting apps
> in PV guests can inadvertently use the raw values is known to be
> a problem, not a feature.

Any toolstack which uses this specific hypercall to find out information
normally hidden from dom0 using faulting/masking/policy can only shoot
itself.

The usecase is for enumerating the real cache leaves, which are normally
faked up in the policy anyway, so of no use.

>
> And then - if you already have access to control operations, I
> don't think you need the hyypervisor to help you: Limit your
> vCPU's affinity to the particular pCPU you care about, and do
> what you need doing from the kernel (by also setting the
> processes affinity to the particular CPU you could achieve the
> same even from user land).
>
> Jan
>

Having a toolstack rely on being able to pin its vcpus around so some
userspace can enumerate the cache leaves is horrific.

Apart from forcibly messing with a balanced numa setup, what about cpu
pools, or toolstack disaggregation where pinning is restricted?

~Andrew