Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] KVM: x86/mmu: Return -EAGAIN if userspace deletes/moves memslot during prefault

Binbin Wu
2025-09-09T02:46:36Z

On 8/22/2025 3:03 PM, Yan Zhao wrote:
> From: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
>
> Return -EAGAIN if userspace attempts to delete or move a memslot while also
> prefaulting memory for that same memslot, i.e. force userspace to retry
> instead of trying to handle the scenario entirely within KVM. Unlike
> KVM_RUN, which needs to handle the scenario entirely within KVM because
> userspace has come to depend on such behavior, KVM_PRE_FAULT_MEMORY can
> return -EAGAIN without breaking userspace as this scenario can't have ever
> worked (and there's no sane use case for prefaulting to a memslot that's
> being deleted/moved).
>
> And also unlike KVM_RUN, the prefault path doesn't naturally gaurantee

gaurantee -> guarantee

> forward progress. E.g. to handle such a scenario, KVM would need to drop
> and reacquire SRCU to break the deadlock between the memslot update
> (synchronizes SRCU) and the prefault (waits for the memslot update to
> complete).
>
> However, dropping SRCU creates more problems, as completing the memslot
> update will bump the memslot generation, which in turn will invalidate the
> MMU root. To handle that, prefaulting would need to handle pending
> KVM_REQ_MMU_FREE_OBSOLETE_ROOTS requests and do kvm_mmu_reload() prior to
> mapping each individual.
>
> I.e. to fully handle this scenario, prefaulting would eventually need to
> look a lot like vcpu_enter_guest(). Given that there's no reasonable use
> case and practically zero risk of breaking userspace, punt the problem to
> userspace and avoid adding unnecessary complexity to the prefualt path.

prefualt -> prefault

>
> Note, TDX's guest_memfd post-populate path is unaffected as slots_lock is
> held for the entire duration of populate(), i.e. any memslot modifications
> will be fully serialized against TDX's flavor of prefaulting.
>
> Reported-by: Reinette Chatre <reinette.chatre@intel.com>
> Closes: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20250519023737.30360-1-yan.y.zhao@intel.com
> Debugged-by: Yan Zhao <yan.y.zhao@intel.com>
> Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>

Two typos above.

Otherwise,
Reviewed-by: Binbin Wu <binbin.wu@linux.intel.com>

> ---
> arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c | 10 ++++++++--
> 1 file changed, 8 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c b/arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c
> index 92ff15969a36..f31fad33c423 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c
> +++ b/arch/x86/kvm/mmu/mmu.c
> @@ -4653,10 +4653,16 @@ static int kvm_mmu_faultin_pfn(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu,
> /*
> * Retry the page fault if the gfn hit a memslot that is being deleted
> * or moved. This ensures any existing SPTEs for the old memslot will
> - * be zapped before KVM inserts a new MMIO SPTE for the gfn.
> + * be zapped before KVM inserts a new MMIO SPTE for the gfn. Punt the
> + * error to userspace if this is a prefault, as KVM's prefaulting ABI
> + * doesn't need provide the same forward progress guarantees as KVM_RUN.
> */
> - if (slot->flags & KVM_MEMSLOT_INVALID)
> + if (slot->flags & KVM_MEMSLOT_INVALID) {
> + if (fault->prefetch)
> + return -EAGAIN;
> +
> return RET_PF_RETRY;
> + }
>
> if (slot->id == APIC_ACCESS_PAGE_PRIVATE_MEMSLOT) {
> /*