Re: [PATCH -next] memregion: Add arch_flush_memregion() interface

Jonathan Cameron
2022-09-08T13:00:22Z

On Wed, 7 Sep 2022 23:53:31 -0700
Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> wrote:

> Borislav Petkov wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 07, 2022 at 09:52:17AM -0700, Dan Williams wrote:
> > > To be clear nfit stuff and CXL does run in guests, but they do not
> > > support secure-erase in a guest.
> > >
> > > However, the QEMU CXL enabling is building the ability to do *guest
> > > physical* address space management, but in that case the driver can be
> > > paravirtualized to realize that it is not managing host-physical address
> > > space and does not need to flush caches. That will need some indicator
> > > to differentiate virtual CXL memory expanders from assigned devices.
> >
> > Sounds to me like that check should be improved later to ask
> > whether the kernel is managing host-physical address space, maybe
> > arch_flush_memregion() should check whether the address it is supposed
> > to flush is host-physical and exit early if not...
>
> Even though I raised the possibility of guest passthrough of a CXL
> memory expander, I do not think it could work in practice without it
> being a gigantic security nightmare. So it is probably safe to just do
> the hypervisor check and assume that there's no such thing as guest
> management of host physical address space.

Agreed. Other than occasional convenience of doing driver development
in a VM (they reboot quickly ;) can't see why a product system would need
to pass a CXL type 3 device through and as you say security would be 'interesting'
if it were done. Might be GPU usecases down the line but I'm doubtful on that
as well.

Jonathan