From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1162321AbeCAVjw (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 Mar 2018 16:39:52 -0500 Received: from mx3-rdu2.redhat.com ([66.187.233.73]:45312 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1162200AbeCAVjk (ORCPT ); Thu, 1 Mar 2018 16:39:40 -0500 Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2018 22:39:04 +0100 From: Radim =?utf-8?B?S3LEjW3DocWZ?= To: Paolo Bonzini Cc: Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kvm@vger.kernel.org, David Woodhouse , KarimAllah Ahmed Subject: Re: [PATCH] KVM: VMX: expose the host's ARCH_CAPABILITIES MSR to userspace Message-ID: <20180301213205.GB29001@flask> References: <1519433546-33879-1-git-send-email-pbonzini@redhat.com> <20180226221300.GK22024@char.us.oracle.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20180226221300.GK22024@char.us.oracle.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org [Resent after removing g@char.us.oracle.com.] 2018-02-26 17:13-0500, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk: > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 01:52:26AM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote: > > Use the new MSR feature framework to expose the ARCH_CAPABILITIES MSR to > > userspace. This way, userspace can access the capabilities even if it > > does not have the permissions to read MSRs. > > ... That is good but could you expand a bit of why it would want this? > > I am 99% sure it is due to the lovely spectre_v2 mitigation but > could you include that in the commit message so that in say a year > folks would know what this is? Userspace can currently get the MSR by creating a VCPU and reading its MSR_IA32_ARCH_CAPABILITIES, because it is set from the hardware MSR. I thought that "permissions to read MSRs" talked about hardware MSRs, so the purpose of this patch would be a better interface, but I don't see how if we keep the auto-setting on VCPU creation. Is this aimed towards userspaces that want nothing else from KVM than the MSR value? Thanks.