Re: [RFC PATCH 1/5] nvme-pci: add function nvme_submit_vf_cmd to issue admin commands for VF driver.

Christoph Hellwig
2022-12-07T16:39:05Z

On Wed, Dec 07, 2022 at 11:07:11AM -0400, Jason Gunthorpe wrote:
> > And while that is a fine concept per see, the current incarnation of
> > that is fundamentally broken is it centered around the controlled
> > VM. Which really can't work.
>
> I don't see why you keep saying this. It is centered around the struct
> vfio_device object in the kernel, which is definately NOT the VM.

Sorry, I meant VF. Your continued using of SR-IOV teminology now keeps
confusing my mind so much that I start mistyping things.

> > Even then you need a controlling and a controlled entity. The
> > controlling entity even in SIOV remains a PCIe function. The
> > controlled entity might just be a bunch of hardware resoures and
> > a PASID. Making it important again that all migration is driven
> > by the controlling entity.
>
> If they are the same driver implementing vfio_device you may be able
> to claim they conceptually exist, but it is pretty artificial to draw
> this kind of distinction inside a single driver.

How are they in this reply? I can't parse how this even relates to
what I wrote.

> > Also the whole concept that only VFIO can do live migration is
> > a little bogus. With checkpoint and restart it absolutely
> > does make sense to live migrate a container, and with that
> > the hardware interface (e.g. nvme controller) assigned to it.
>
> I agree people may want to do this, but it is very unclear how SRIOV
> live migration can help do this.

SRIOV live migration doesn't, because honestly there is no such
thing as "SRIOV" live migration to start with.

> Let alone how to solve the security problems of allow userspace to
> load arbitary FW blobs into a device with potentially insecure DMA
> access..

Any time you assign a PCI device to userspace you might get into that.