Re: [PATCH 1/2] dma-direct: Validate DMA mask against canonical DMA addresses

Jason Gunthorpe
2026-01-20T13:27:01Z

On Tue, Jan 20, 2026 at 12:12:54PM +0530, Aneesh Kumar K.V (Arm) wrote:
> On systems that apply an address encryption tag or mask to DMA addresses,
> DMA mask validation must be performed against the canonical DMA address.
> Using a non-canonical (e.g. encrypted or unencrypted) DMA address
> can incorrectly fail capability checks, since architecture-specific
> encryption bits are not part of the device’s actual DMA addressing
> capability. For example, arm64 adds PROT_NS_SHARED to unencrypted DMA
> addresses.

Huh?

static inline dma_addr_t phys_to_dma_direct(struct device *dev,
phys_addr_t phys)
{
if (force_dma_unencrypted(dev))
return phys_to_dma_unencrypted(dev, phys);
return phys_to_dma(dev, phys);
}

dma_addr_t swiotlb_map(struct device *dev, phys_addr_t paddr, size_t size,
enum dma_data_direction dir, unsigned long attrs)
{
[..]

/* Ensure that the address returned is DMA'ble */
dma_addr = phys_to_dma_unencrypted(dev, swiotlb_addr);
[..]
return dma_addr;
}

The check in dma_direct_supported() is checking if the device's HW
capability can contain the range of dma_addr_t's the DMA API will
generate. Since it above is generating dma_addr_t's with the
PROT_NS_SHARED set, it is correct to check it against the mask.

If the IOVA does not contain PROT_NS_SHARED then I would expect all of
the above to be removed too?

Can you please explain what the probem is better?

I just had a long talk with our internal people about this very
subject and they were adament that the ARM design had the T=0 SMMU S2
configured so that the IOVA starts at PROT_NS_SHARED, not 0. I am
against this, I think it is a bad choice, and this patch is showing
exactly why :)

IMHO you should map the T=0 S2 so that the IOVA starts at 0 and we
don't add PROT_NS_SHARED to the IOVA anyhwere.

This logic is going to be wrong for T=1 DMA to private memory though.

Jason