Re: [PATCH v3 1/4] KVM: VMX: Flush CPU buffers as needed if L1D cache flush is skipped

Pawan Gupta
2025-10-27T23:17:28Z

On Mon, Oct 27, 2025 at 03:03:23PM -0700, Jim Mattson wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 21, 2025 at 6:20 PM Pawan Gupta
> <pawan.kumar.gupta@linux.intel.com> wrote:
> >
> > ...
> > Thinking more on this, the software sequence is only invoked when the
> > system doesn't have the L1D flushing feature added by a microcode update.
> > In such a case system is not expected to have a flushing VERW either, which
> > was introduced after L1TF. Also, the admin needs to have a very good reason
> > for not updating the microcode for 5+ years :-)
>
> KVM started reporting MD_CLEAR to userspace in Linux v5.2, but it
> didn't report L1D_FLUSH to userspace until Linux v6.4, so there are
> plenty of virtual CPUs with a flushing VERW that don't have the L1D
> flushing feature.

Shouldn't only the L0 hypervisor be doing the L1D_FLUSH?

kvm_get_arch_capabilities()
{
...
/*
* If we're doing cache flushes (either "always" or "cond")
* we will do one whenever the guest does a vmlaunch/vmresume.
* If an outer hypervisor is doing the cache flush for us
* (ARCH_CAP_SKIP_VMENTRY_L1DFLUSH), we can safely pass that
* capability to the guest too, and if EPT is disabled we're not
* vulnerable. Overall, only VMENTER_L1D_FLUSH_NEVER will
* require a nested hypervisor to do a flush of its own.
*/
if (l1tf_vmx_mitigation != VMENTER_L1D_FLUSH_NEVER)
data |= ARCH_CAP_SKIP_VMENTRY_L1DFLUSH;