Re: [PATCH v2 5/7] KVM: arm64: MTE: Use stage-2 NoTagAccess memory attribute if supported

Catalin Marinas
2025-01-15T13:15:18Z

On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 12:47:54PM -0800, Peter Collingbourne wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 13, 2025 at 11:09 AM Catalin Marinas
> <catalin.marinas@arm.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jan 11, 2025 at 06:49:55PM +0530, Aneesh Kumar K.V wrote:
> > > Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com> writes:
> > > > On Fri, Jan 10, 2025 at 04:30:21PM +0530, Aneesh Kumar K.V (Arm) wrote:
> > > >> Currently, the kernel won't start a guest if the MTE feature is enabled
> > >
> > > ...
> > >
> > > >> @@ -2152,7 +2162,8 @@ int kvm_arch_prepare_memory_region(struct kvm *kvm,
> > > >> if (!vma)
> > > >> break;
> > > >>
> > > >> - if (kvm_has_mte(kvm) && !kvm_vma_mte_allowed(vma)) {
> > > >> + if (kvm_has_mte(kvm) &&
> > > >> + !kvm_has_mte_perm(kvm) && !kvm_vma_mte_allowed(vma)) {
> > > >> ret = -EINVAL;
> > > >> break;
> > > >> }
> > > >
> > > > I don't think we should change this, or at least not how it's done above
> > > > (Suzuki raised a related issue internally relaxing this for VM_PFNMAP).
> > > >
> > > > For standard memory slots, we want to reject them upfront rather than
> > > > deferring to the fault handler. An example here is file mmap() passed as
> > > > standard RAM to the VM. It's an unnecessary change in behaviour IMHO.
> > > > I'd only relax this for VM_PFNMAP mappings further down in this
> > > > function (and move the VM_PFNMAP check above; see Suzuki's internal
> > > > patch, unless he posted it publicly already).
> > >
> > > But we want to handle memslots backed by pagecache pages for virtio-shm
> > > here (virtiofs dax use case).
> >
> > Ah, I forgot about this use case. So with virtiofs DAX, does a host page
> > cache page (host VMM mmap()) get mapped directly into the guest as a
> > separate memory slot? In this case, the host vma would not have
> > VM_MTE_ALLOWED set.
> >
> > > With MTE_PERM, we can essentially skip the
> > > kvm_vma_mte_allowed(vma) check because we handle all types in the fault
> > > handler.
> >
> > This was pretty much the early behaviour when we added KVM support for
> > MTE, allow !VM_MTE_ALLOWED and trap them later. However, we disallowed
> > VM_SHARED because of some non-trivial race. Commit d89585fbb308 ("KVM:
> > arm64: unify the tests for VMAs in memslots when MTE is enabled")
> > changed this behaviour and the VM_MTE_ALLOWED check happens upfront. A
> > subsequent commit removed the VM_SHARED check.
> >
> > It's a minor ABI change but I'm trying to figure out why we needed this
> > upfront check rather than simply dropping the VM_SHARED check. Adding
> > Peter in case he remembers. I can't see any race if we simply skipped
> > this check altogether, irrespective of FEAT_MTE_PERM.
>
> I don't see a problem with removing the upfront check. The reason I
> kept the check was IIRC just that there was already a check there and
> its logic needed to be adjusted for my VM_SHARED changes.

Prior to commit d89585fbb308, kvm_arch_prepare_memory_region() only
rejected a memory slot if VM_SHARED was set. This commit unified the
checking with user_mem_abort(), with slots being rejected if
(!VM_MTE_ALLOWED || VM_SHARED). A subsequent commit dropped the
VM_SHARED check, so we ended up with memory slots being rejected only if
!VM_MTE_ALLOWED (of course, if kvm_has_mte()). This wasn't the case
before the VM_SHARED relaxation.

So if you don't remember any strong reason for this change, I think we
should go back to the original behaviour of deferring the VM_MTE_ALLOWED
check to user_mem_abort() (and still permitting VM_SHARED).

--
Catalin