* [PATCH 1/4] KVM: SEV: Treat unassigned RMP entry as benign race on PSMASH failure
2026-08-18 8:12 [PATCH 0/4] Stop returning struct page from guest_memfd PFN lookup Ackerley Tng
@ 2026-08-18 8:12 ` Ackerley Tng
2026-08-18 8:12 ` [PATCH 2/4] KVM: SEV: Drop page refcount early during RMP fault handling Ackerley Tng
` (2 subsequent siblings)
3 siblings, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: Ackerley Tng @ 2026-08-18 8:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Sean Christopherson, Paolo Bonzini, Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar,
Borislav Petkov, Dave Hansen, x86, H. Peter Anvin, Ashish Kalra,
Michael Roth, Brijesh Singh, Marc Zyngier, Oliver Upton,
Joey Gouly, Steffen Eiden, Suzuki K Poulose, Zenghui Yu,
Catalin Marinas, Will Deacon, David Hildenbrand, Fuad Tabba,
Yan Zhao, Edgecombe, Rick P, Vishal Annapurve
Cc: kvm, linux-kernel, linux-arm-kernel, kvmarm, Ackerley Tng
When handling an RMP fault, KVM attempts to split a 2MB page via PSMASH.
If PSMASH fails, the only expected return value is FAIL_BADADDR, which does
not distinguish the reason for the bad address. Hence, another RMP entry
lookup is required to determine whether the failure was benign.
Specifically, KVM re-checks the RMP entry to determine if another CPU raced
and already smashed the entry into 4KB pages.
A concurrent operation (such as guest_memfd truncation or hole punching)
can also race and transition the page to shared, removing the page from the
RMP table and causing PSMASH to fail. This can happen even if the page is
still referenced by KVM, because guest_memfd reclaim transitions the RMP
entry to shared when the folio is removed from the page cache.
Treat an unassigned RMP entry as an expected race when re-checking after a
failed PSMASH, and skip logging an error warning.
Fixes: c63cf135cc99 ("KVM: SEV: Add support to handle RMP nested page faults")
Signed-off-by: Ackerley Tng <ackerleytng@google.com>
---
arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c | 5 +++--
1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
index fcb41dfde4c02..b2738362a928b 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
@@ -5074,10 +5074,11 @@ void sev_handle_rmp_fault(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa, u64 error_code)
/*
* Look it up again. If it's 4K now then the PSMASH may have
* raced with another process and the issue has already resolved
- * itself.
+ * itself. If it's not assigned, then this must have raced with
+ * another process that made this page shared.
*/
if (!snp_lookup_rmpentry(pfn, &assigned, &rmp_level) &&
- assigned && rmp_level == PG_LEVEL_4K)
+ ((assigned && rmp_level == PG_LEVEL_4K) || !assigned))
goto out;
pr_warn_ratelimited("SEV: Unable to split RMP entry for GPA 0x%llx PFN 0x%llx ret %d\n",
--
2.55.0.699.gb54405d56f-goog
^ permalink raw reply related [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread* [PATCH 2/4] KVM: SEV: Drop page refcount early during RMP fault handling
2026-08-18 8:12 [PATCH 0/4] Stop returning struct page from guest_memfd PFN lookup Ackerley Tng
2026-08-18 8:12 ` [PATCH 1/4] KVM: SEV: Treat unassigned RMP entry as benign race on PSMASH failure Ackerley Tng
@ 2026-08-18 8:12 ` Ackerley Tng
2026-08-18 8:12 ` Yan Zhao
2026-08-18 8:12 ` [PATCH 3/4] KVM: SEV: Drop page refcount early in VMSA reload Ackerley Tng
2026-08-18 8:12 ` [PATCH 4/4] KVM: guest_memfd: Stop returning struct page from PFN lookup Ackerley Tng
3 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread
From: Ackerley Tng @ 2026-08-18 8:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Sean Christopherson, Paolo Bonzini, Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar,
Borislav Petkov, Dave Hansen, x86, H. Peter Anvin, Ashish Kalra,
Michael Roth, Brijesh Singh, Marc Zyngier, Oliver Upton,
Joey Gouly, Steffen Eiden, Suzuki K Poulose, Zenghui Yu,
Catalin Marinas, Will Deacon, David Hildenbrand, Fuad Tabba,
Yan Zhao, Edgecombe, Rick P, Vishal Annapurve
Cc: kvm, linux-kernel, linux-arm-kernel, kvmarm, Ackerley Tng
When handling an RMP fault, KVM retrieves the PFN for a private GPA from
guest_memfd. The page reference taken during PFN lookup is not needed for
the remainder of the handler, as checking the RMP entry, splitting the
2MB page via PSMASH, and zapping shadow page tables only operate on PFNs.
Drop the page reference immediately after retrieving the PFN instead of
holding it across the entire handler.
A later patch will follow up with completely not returning refcounted pages
from kvm_gmem_get_pfn().
No functional change intended.
Signed-off-by: Ackerley Tng <ackerleytng@google.com>
---
arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c | 5 ++---
1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
index b2738362a928b..19c31fa944e34 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
@@ -5036,12 +5036,13 @@ void sev_handle_rmp_fault(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa, u64 error_code)
gpa);
return;
}
+ kvm_release_page_unused(page);
ret = snp_lookup_rmpentry(pfn, &assigned, &rmp_level);
if (ret || !assigned) {
pr_warn_ratelimited("SEV: Unexpected RMP fault, no assigned RMP entry found for GPA 0x%llx PFN 0x%llx error %d\n",
gpa, pfn, ret);
- goto out_no_trace;
+ return;
}
/*
@@ -5088,8 +5089,6 @@ void sev_handle_rmp_fault(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa, u64 error_code)
kvm_zap_gfn_range(kvm, gfn, gfn + PTRS_PER_PMD);
out:
trace_kvm_rmp_fault(vcpu, gpa, pfn, error_code, rmp_level, ret);
-out_no_trace:
- kvm_release_page_unused(page);
}
static bool is_pfn_range_shared(kvm_pfn_t start, kvm_pfn_t end)
--
2.55.0.699.gb54405d56f-goog
^ permalink raw reply related [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread* [PATCH 3/4] KVM: SEV: Drop page refcount early in VMSA reload
2026-08-18 8:12 [PATCH 0/4] Stop returning struct page from guest_memfd PFN lookup Ackerley Tng
2026-08-18 8:12 ` [PATCH 1/4] KVM: SEV: Treat unassigned RMP entry as benign race on PSMASH failure Ackerley Tng
2026-08-18 8:12 ` [PATCH 2/4] KVM: SEV: Drop page refcount early during RMP fault handling Ackerley Tng
@ 2026-08-18 8:12 ` Ackerley Tng
2026-08-18 8:12 ` [PATCH 4/4] KVM: guest_memfd: Stop returning struct page from PFN lookup Ackerley Tng
3 siblings, 0 replies; 9+ messages in thread
From: Ackerley Tng @ 2026-08-18 8:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Sean Christopherson, Paolo Bonzini, Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar,
Borislav Petkov, Dave Hansen, x86, H. Peter Anvin, Ashish Kalra,
Michael Roth, Brijesh Singh, Marc Zyngier, Oliver Upton,
Joey Gouly, Steffen Eiden, Suzuki K Poulose, Zenghui Yu,
Catalin Marinas, Will Deacon, David Hildenbrand, Fuad Tabba,
Yan Zhao, Edgecombe, Rick P, Vishal Annapurve
Cc: kvm, linux-kernel, linux-arm-kernel, kvmarm, Ackerley Tng
When reloading the guest VMSA for an SEV-SNP vCPU, KVM retrieves the PFN
from guest_memfd.
Drop the page reference immediately after retrieving the PFN instead of
holding it across MMU lock acquisition in preparation for a follow-up patch
to stop returning page pointers from guest_memfd PFN lookups.
This is safe because the page's validity and presence are governed by KVM's
MMU invalidation protocol rather than the page reference.
No functional change intended.
Signed-off-by: Ackerley Tng <ackerleytng@google.com>
---
arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c | 3 +--
1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-)
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
index 19c31fa944e34..3fc582fa343cc 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
@@ -4062,6 +4062,7 @@ static void __sev_snp_reload_vmsa(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa)
*/
if (kvm_gmem_get_pfn(vcpu->kvm, slot, gfn, &pfn, &page, NULL))
return;
+ kvm_release_page_clean(page);
read_lock(&kvm->mmu_lock);
/*
@@ -4076,8 +4077,6 @@ static void __sev_snp_reload_vmsa(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa)
else
svm->vmcb->control.vmsa_pa = pfn_to_hpa(pfn);
read_unlock(&kvm->mmu_lock);
-
- kvm_release_page_clean(page);
}
/*
--
2.55.0.699.gb54405d56f-goog
^ permalink raw reply related [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread
* [PATCH 4/4] KVM: guest_memfd: Stop returning struct page from PFN lookup
2026-08-18 8:12 [PATCH 0/4] Stop returning struct page from guest_memfd PFN lookup Ackerley Tng
` (2 preceding siblings ...)
2026-08-18 8:12 ` [PATCH 3/4] KVM: SEV: Drop page refcount early in VMSA reload Ackerley Tng
@ 2026-08-18 8:12 ` Ackerley Tng
2026-08-18 8:34 ` Yan Zhao
3 siblings, 1 reply; 9+ messages in thread
From: Ackerley Tng @ 2026-08-18 8:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
To: Sean Christopherson, Paolo Bonzini, Thomas Gleixner, Ingo Molnar,
Borislav Petkov, Dave Hansen, x86, H. Peter Anvin, Ashish Kalra,
Michael Roth, Brijesh Singh, Marc Zyngier, Oliver Upton,
Joey Gouly, Steffen Eiden, Suzuki K Poulose, Zenghui Yu,
Catalin Marinas, Will Deacon, David Hildenbrand, Fuad Tabba,
Yan Zhao, Edgecombe, Rick P, Vishal Annapurve
Cc: kvm, linux-kernel, linux-arm-kernel, kvmarm, Ackerley Tng
From: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
KVM currently expects guest_memfd PFN lookups to return a refcounted
struct page, which callers hold across fault handling.
Holding a page reference across fault handling is problematic for
guest_memfd. In-place memory conversions between confidential
computing shared and private states inspect folio refcounts to ensure
exclusive ownership by guest_memfd. A concurrent guest page fault
taking a reference on the folio causes conversions to fail due to an
elevated refcount.
guest_memfd already notifies KVM of page invalidations, so callers
within KVM only need to respect the MMU invalidation protocol to safely
rely on guest_memfd for page presence.
Furthermore, removing struct page from the guest_memfd PFN lookup moves
KVM closer toward supporting memory backends that are not backed by
struct page.
Drop the folio reference immediately before returning from the
guest_memfd PFN lookup, and stop returning the struct page pointer.
For ARM, initialize the local page pointer to NULL so that the shared
cleanup path that releases fault-in pages safely no-ops for guest_memfd.
For x86, no additional changes are required in the MMU fault path
because the page fault tracking structure is zero-initialized at the
start of page fault handling, ensuring the refcounted page pointer is
already NULL.
Reported-by: Yan Zhao <yan.y.zhao@intel.com>
Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/anZ4W9o5pTWIEgMY@yzhao56-desk.sh.intel.com/
Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
Co-developed-by: Yan Zhao <yan.y.zhao@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Yan Zhao <yan.y.zhao@intel.com>
Co-developed-by: Ackerley Tng <ackerleytng@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Ackerley Tng <ackerleytng@google.com>
---
arch/arm64/kvm/mmu.c | 4 ++--
arch/arm64/kvm/nested.c | 4 ++--
arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c | 2 +-
arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c | 8 ++------
include/linux/kvm_host.h | 6 ++----
virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c | 9 ++-------
6 files changed, 11 insertions(+), 22 deletions(-)
diff --git a/arch/arm64/kvm/mmu.c b/arch/arm64/kvm/mmu.c
index 6c941aaa10c63..e5d637a5ec558 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/kvm/mmu.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/kvm/mmu.c
@@ -1613,7 +1613,7 @@ static int gmem_abort(const struct kvm_s2_fault_desc *s2fd)
enum kvm_pgtable_prot prot = KVM_PGTABLE_PROT_R;
struct kvm_pgtable *pgt = s2fd->vcpu->arch.hw_mmu->pgt;
unsigned long mmu_seq;
- struct page *page;
+ struct page *page = NULL;
struct kvm *kvm = s2fd->vcpu->kvm;
void *memcache = NULL;
kvm_pfn_t pfn;
@@ -1641,7 +1641,7 @@ static int gmem_abort(const struct kvm_s2_fault_desc *s2fd)
/* Pairs with the smp_wmb() in kvm_mmu_invalidate_end(). */
smp_rmb();
- ret = kvm_gmem_get_pfn(kvm, s2fd->memslot, gfn, &pfn, &page, NULL);
+ ret = kvm_gmem_get_pfn(kvm, s2fd->memslot, gfn, &pfn, NULL);
if (ret) {
kvm_prepare_memory_fault_exit(s2fd->vcpu, s2fd->fault_ipa, PAGE_SIZE,
write_fault, exec_fault, false);
diff --git a/arch/arm64/kvm/nested.c b/arch/arm64/kvm/nested.c
index fb54f6dad995c..43523bb17621a 100644
--- a/arch/arm64/kvm/nested.c
+++ b/arch/arm64/kvm/nested.c
@@ -1360,7 +1360,7 @@ static int kvm_translate_vncr(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, bool *is_gmem)
bool write_fault, writable;
unsigned long mmu_seq;
struct vncr_tlb *vt;
- struct page *page;
+ struct page *page = NULL;
u64 va, pfn, gfn;
int ret;
@@ -1411,7 +1411,7 @@ static int kvm_translate_vncr(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, bool *is_gmem)
if (is_error_noslot_pfn(pfn) || (write_fault && !writable))
return -EFAULT;
} else {
- ret = kvm_gmem_get_pfn(vcpu->kvm, memslot, gfn, &pfn, &page, NULL);
+ ret = kvm_gmem_get_pfn(vcpu->kvm, memslot, gfn, &pfn, NULL);
if (ret) {
kvm_prepare_memory_fault_exit(vcpu, vt->wr.pa, PAGE_SIZE,
write_fault, false, false);
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c b/arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c
index c519e8e8d646f..129d403308051 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c
@@ -4604,7 +4604,7 @@ static int kvm_mmu_faultin_pfn_gmem(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu,
}
r = kvm_gmem_get_pfn(vcpu->kvm, fault->slot, fault->gfn, &fault->pfn,
- &fault->refcounted_page, &max_order);
+ &max_order);
if (r) {
kvm_mmu_prepare_memory_fault_exit(vcpu, fault);
return r;
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
index 3fc582fa343cc..0a324e5b556b1 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/sev.c
@@ -4016,7 +4016,6 @@ static void __sev_snp_reload_vmsa(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa)
struct kvm *kvm = vcpu->kvm;
gfn_t gfn = gpa_to_gfn(gpa);
unsigned long mmu_seq;
- struct page *page;
kvm_pfn_t pfn;
lockdep_assert_held(&svm->sev_es.snp_vmsa_mutex);
@@ -4060,9 +4059,8 @@ static void __sev_snp_reload_vmsa(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa)
* The new VMSA will be private memory guest memory, so retrieve the
* PFN from the gmem backend.
*/
- if (kvm_gmem_get_pfn(vcpu->kvm, slot, gfn, &pfn, &page, NULL))
+ if (kvm_gmem_get_pfn(vcpu->kvm, slot, gfn, &pfn, NULL))
return;
- kvm_release_page_clean(page);
read_lock(&kvm->mmu_lock);
/*
@@ -5002,7 +5000,6 @@ void sev_handle_rmp_fault(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa, u64 error_code)
struct kvm_memory_slot *slot;
struct kvm *kvm = vcpu->kvm;
int order, rmp_level, ret;
- struct page *page;
bool assigned;
kvm_pfn_t pfn;
gfn_t gfn;
@@ -5029,13 +5026,12 @@ void sev_handle_rmp_fault(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa, u64 error_code)
return;
}
- ret = kvm_gmem_get_pfn(kvm, slot, gfn, &pfn, &page, &order);
+ ret = kvm_gmem_get_pfn(kvm, slot, gfn, &pfn, &order);
if (ret) {
pr_warn_ratelimited("SEV: Unexpected RMP fault, no backing page for private GPA 0x%llx\n",
gpa);
return;
}
- kvm_release_page_unused(page);
ret = snp_lookup_rmpentry(pfn, &assigned, &rmp_level);
if (ret || !assigned) {
diff --git a/include/linux/kvm_host.h b/include/linux/kvm_host.h
index 03bfc92864b6e..502465119ca0c 100644
--- a/include/linux/kvm_host.h
+++ b/include/linux/kvm_host.h
@@ -2586,13 +2586,11 @@ static inline bool kvm_mem_is_private(struct kvm *kvm, gfn_t gfn)
#ifdef CONFIG_KVM_GUEST_MEMFD
int kvm_gmem_get_pfn(struct kvm *kvm, struct kvm_memory_slot *slot,
- gfn_t gfn, kvm_pfn_t *pfn, struct page **page,
- int *max_order);
+ gfn_t gfn, kvm_pfn_t *pfn, int *max_order);
#else
static inline int kvm_gmem_get_pfn(struct kvm *kvm,
struct kvm_memory_slot *slot, gfn_t gfn,
- kvm_pfn_t *pfn, struct page **page,
- int *max_order)
+ kvm_pfn_t *pfn, int *max_order)
{
KVM_BUG_ON(1, kvm);
return -EIO;
diff --git a/virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c b/virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c
index b596486d184ca..589762140c3ef 100644
--- a/virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c
+++ b/virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c
@@ -751,8 +751,7 @@ static struct folio *__kvm_gmem_get_pfn(struct file *file,
}
int kvm_gmem_get_pfn(struct kvm *kvm, struct kvm_memory_slot *slot,
- gfn_t gfn, kvm_pfn_t *pfn, struct page **page,
- int *max_order)
+ gfn_t gfn, kvm_pfn_t *pfn, int *max_order)
{
pgoff_t index = kvm_gmem_get_index(slot, gfn);
struct folio *folio;
@@ -780,11 +779,7 @@ int kvm_gmem_get_pfn(struct kvm *kvm, struct kvm_memory_slot *slot,
#endif
folio_unlock(folio);
-
- if (!r)
- *page = folio_file_page(folio, index);
- else
- folio_put(folio);
+ folio_put(folio);
return r;
}
--
2.55.0.699.gb54405d56f-goog
^ permalink raw reply related [flat|nested] 9+ messages in thread