[PATCH v2 00/13] KVM: x86: Allow userspace to disable the emulator

Sean Christopherson
2020-02-18T23:29:56Z

The primary intent of this series is to dynamically allocate the emulator
and get KVM to a state where the emulator *could* be disabled at some
point in the future. Actually allowing userspace to disable the emulator
was a minor change at that point, so I threw it in.

Dynamically allocating the emulator shrinks the size of x86 vcpus by
~2.5k bytes, which is important because 'struct vcpu_vmx' has once again
fattened up and squeaked past the PAGE_ALLOC_COSTLY_ORDER threshold.
Moving the emulator to its own allocation gives us some breathing room
for the near future, and has some other nice side effects.

As for disabling the emulator... in the not-too-distant future, I expect
there will be use cases that can truly disable KVM's emulator, e.g. for
security (KVM's and/or the guests). I don't have a strong opinion on
whether or not KVM should actually allow userspace to disable the emulator
without a concrete use case (unless there already is a use case?), which
is why that part is done in its own tiny patch.

Running without an emulator has been "tested" in the sense that the
selftests that don't require emulation continue to pass, and everything
else fails with the expected "emulation error".

v2:
- Rebase to kvm/queue, 2c2787938512 ("KVM: selftests: Stop ...")

Sean Christopherson (13):
KVM: x86: Refactor I/O emulation helpers to provide vcpu-only variant
KVM: x86: Explicitly pass an exception struct to check_intercept
KVM: x86: Move emulation-only helpers to emulate.c
KVM: x86: Refactor R/W page helper to take the emulation context
KVM: x86: Refactor emulated exception injection to take the emul
context
KVM: x86: Refactor emulate tracepoint to explicitly take context
KVM: x86: Refactor init_emulate_ctxt() to explicitly take context
KVM: x86: Dynamically allocate per-vCPU emulation context
KVM: x86: Move kvm_emulate.h into KVM's private directory
KVM: x86: Shrink the usercopy region of the emulation context
KVM: x86: Add helper to "handle" internal emulation error
KVM: x86: Add variable to control existence of emulator
KVM: x86: Allow userspace to disable the kernel's emulator

arch/x86/include/asm/kvm_host.h | 12 +-
arch/x86/kvm/emulate.c | 13 +-
arch/x86/{include/asm => kvm}/kvm_emulate.h | 9 +-
arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c | 1 +
arch/x86/kvm/svm.c | 5 +-
arch/x86/kvm/trace.h | 22 +--
arch/x86/kvm/vmx/vmx.c | 15 +-
arch/x86/kvm/x86.c | 193 +++++++++++++-------
arch/x86/kvm/x86.h | 12 +-
9 files changed, 183 insertions(+), 99 deletions(-)
rename arch/x86/{include/asm => kvm}/kvm_emulate.h (99%)

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2.24.1