From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Ed White <edmund.h.white@intel.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 05/12] VMX/altp2m: add code to support
 EPTP switching and #VE.
Date: Wed, 24 Jun 2015 10:31:49 -0700
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To: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>, xen-devel@lists.xen.org
Cc: Ravi Sahita <ravi.sahita@intel.com>, Wei Liu <wei.liu2@citrix.com>, Ian Jackson <ian.jackson@eu.citrix.com>, Tim Deegan <tim@xen.org>, Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>, tlengyel@novetta.com, Daniel De Graaf <dgdegra@tycho.nsa.gov>
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On 06/24/2015 04:59 AM, Andrew Cooper wrote:
>> +
>> +    if ( !veinfo )
>> +        return 0;
>> +
>> +    if ( veinfo->semaphore != 0 )
>> +        goto out;
> 
> The semantics of this semaphore are not clearly spelled out in the
> manual.  The only information I can locate concerning this field is in
> note in 25.5.6.1 which says:
> 
> "Delivery of virtualization exceptions writes the value FFFFFFFFH to
> offset 4 in the virtualization-exception informa-
> tion area (see Section 25.5.6.2). Thus, once a virtualization exception
> occurs, another can occur only if software
> clears this field."
> 
> I presume this should be taken to mean "software writes 0 to this
> field", but some clarification would be nice.
> 

Immediately above that, where the conditions required to deliver #VE
are discussed, it says "the 32 bits at offset 4 in the
virtualization-exception information area are all 0". Hardware never
writes anything other than FFFFFFFFH there, so only software can make
that be so.

>> +
>> +            if ( !p2m_find_altp2m_by_eptp(v->domain, eptp, &idx) )
>> +            {
>> +                gdprintk(XENLOG_ERR, "EPTP not found in alternate p2m list\n");
>> +                domain_crash(v->domain);
>> +            }
>> +        }
>> +
> 
> Is it worth checking that idx is plausible at this point, before blindly
> writing it back into the vcpu structure?

I'm not sure I follow your logic. In the case where the hardware supports
EPTP_INDEX, the hardware itself is asserting that the index is valid. In the
case quoted above, if the index isn't valid p2m_find_altp2m_by_eptp() will
fail.

Ed