Re: [PATCH v5 03/15] KVM: SVM: Disable SEV/SEV-ES if NPT is disabled

Sean Christopherson
2021-04-22T16:15:14Z

On Thu, Apr 22, 2021, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 22/04/21 04:11, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > Disable SEV and SEV-ES if NPT is disabled. While the APM doesn't clearly
> > state that NPT is mandatory, it's alluded to by:
> >
> > The guest page tables, managed by the guest, may mark data memory pages
> > as either private or shared, thus allowing selected pages to be shared
> > outside the guest.
> >
> > And practically speaking, shadow paging can't work since KVM can't read
> > the guest's page tables.
> >
> > Fixes: e9df09428996 ("KVM: SVM: Add sev module_param")
> > Cc: Brijesh Singh <brijesh.singh@amd.com
> > Cc: Tom Lendacky <thomas.lendacky@amd.com>
> > Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
> > ---
> > arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c | 30 +++++++++++++++---------------
> > 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 15 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
> > index fed153314aef..0e8489908216 100644
> > --- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
> > +++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
> > @@ -970,7 +970,21 @@ static __init int svm_hardware_setup(void)
> > kvm_enable_efer_bits(EFER_SVME | EFER_LMSLE);
> > }
> > - if (IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_KVM_AMD_SEV) && sev) {
> > + /*
> > + * KVM's MMU doesn't support using 2-level paging for itself, and thus
> > + * NPT isn't supported if the host is using 2-level paging since host
> > + * CR4 is unchanged on VMRUN.
> > + */
> > + if (!IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_X86_64) && !IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_X86_PAE))
> > + npt_enabled = false;
>
> Unrelated, but since you're moving this code: should we be pre-scient and
> tackle host 5-level paging as well?
>
> Support for 5-level page tables on NPT is not hard to fix and could be
> tested by patching QEMU. However, the !NPT case would also have to be fixed
> by extending the PDP and PML4 stacking trick to a PML5.

Isn't that backwards? It's the nested NPT case that requires the stacking trick.
When !NPT is disabled in L0 KVM, 32-bit guests are run with PAE paging. Maybe
I'm misunderstanding what you're suggesting.

> However, without real hardware to test on I'd be a bit wary to do it.
> Looking at 5-level EPT there might be other issues (e.g. what's the guest
> MAXPHYADDR) and I would prefer to see what AMD comes up with exactly in the
> APM. So I would just block loading KVM on hypothetical AMD hosts with
> CR4.LA57=1.

Agreed, I think blocking KVM makes the most sense.