Re: [RFC PATCH v2 01/18] KVM: TDX: Drop PROVE_MMU=y sanity check on to-be-populated mappings

[Binbin Wu <binbin.wu@linux.intel.com>]

On 8/29/2025 8:06 AM, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> Drop TDX's sanity check that an S-EPT mapping isn't zapped between creating
                                  ^
                                 should be M-EPT?

> said mapping and doing TDH.MEM.PAGE.ADD, as the check is simultaneously
> superfluous and incomplete.  Per commit 2608f1057601 ("KVM: x86/tdp_mmu:
> Add a helper function to walk down the TDP MMU"), the justification for
> introducing kvm_tdp_mmu_gpa_is_mapped() was to check that the target gfn
> was pre-populated, with a link that points to this snippet:
>
>   : > One small question:
>   : >
>   : > What if the memory region passed to KVM_TDX_INIT_MEM_REGION hasn't been pre-
>   : > populated?  If we want to make KVM_TDX_INIT_MEM_REGION work with these regions,
>   : > then we still need to do the real map.  Or we can make KVM_TDX_INIT_MEM_REGION
>   : > return error when it finds the region hasn't been pre-populated?
>   :
>   : Return an error.  I don't love the idea of bleeding so many TDX details into
>   : userspace, but I'm pretty sure that ship sailed a long, long time ago.
>
> But that justification makes little sense for the final code, as simply
> doing TDH.MEM.PAGE.ADD without a paranoid sanity check will return an error
> if the S-EPT mapping is invalid (as evidenced by the code being guarded
> with CONFIG_KVM_PROVE_MMU=y).

I think this also needs to be updated.
As Yan mentioned in https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/aK6+TQ0r1j5j2PCx@yzhao56-desk.sh.intel.com/
TDH.MEM.PAGE.ADD would succeed without error, but error is still can be detected
via the value of nr_premapped in the end.

>
> The sanity check is also incomplete in the sense that mmu_lock is dropped
> between the check and TDH.MEM.PAGE.ADD, i.e. will only detect KVM bugs that
> zap SPTEs in a very specific window.
>
> Removing the sanity check will allow removing kvm_tdp_mmu_gpa_is_mapped(),
> which has no business being exposed to vendor code.
>
> Reviewed-by: Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@intel.com>
> Reviewed-by: Kai Huang <kai.huang@intel.com>
> Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
> ---
>   arch/x86/kvm/vmx/tdx.c | 14 --------------
>   1 file changed, 14 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/tdx.c b/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/tdx.c
> index 6784aaaced87..71da245d160f 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/tdx.c
> +++ b/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/tdx.c
> @@ -3175,20 +3175,6 @@ static int tdx_gmem_post_populate(struct kvm *kvm, gfn_t gfn, kvm_pfn_t pfn,
>   	if (ret < 0)
>   		goto out;
>   
> -	/*
> -	 * The private mem cannot be zapped after kvm_tdp_map_page()
> -	 * because all paths are covered by slots_lock and the
> -	 * filemap invalidate lock.  Check that they are indeed enough.
> -	 */
> -	if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_KVM_PROVE_MMU)) {
> -		scoped_guard(read_lock, &kvm->mmu_lock) {
> -			if (KVM_BUG_ON(!kvm_tdp_mmu_gpa_is_mapped(vcpu, gpa), kvm)) {
> -				ret = -EIO;
> -				goto out;
> -			}
> -		}
> -	}
> -
>   	ret = 0;
>   	err = tdh_mem_page_add(&kvm_tdx->td, gpa, pfn_to_page(pfn),
>   			       src_page, &entry, &level_state);