Re: [PATCH 4/4] x86,module: Detect CRn and DRn manipulation

Nadav Amit
2020-04-07T23:52:00Z

> On Apr 7, 2020, at 3:12 PM, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On 07/04/20 23:27, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
>> On Tue, Apr 07, 2020 at 02:22:11PM -0700, Nadav Amit wrote:
>>> Anyhow, I do not think it is the only use-case which is not covered by your
>>> patches (even considering CRs/DRs alone). For example, there is no kernel
>>> function to turn on CR4.VMXE, which is required to run hypervisors on x86.
>> That needs an exported function; there is no way we'll allow random
>> writes to CR4, there's too much dodgy stuff in there.
>
> native_write_cr4 and pv_ops (through which you can do write_cr4) are
> both exported, and so is cpu_tlbstate which is used by __cr4_set_bits
> and friends. Am I missing something glaringly obvious?

No, I was the one who missed the obvious thing.

Having said that, I still think there are additional cases that need to be
handled. For instance, I see that is_erratum_383() in KVM (AMD) flushes the
local TLB by writing to CR3 the previous value. I am not familiar with the
erratum. Maybe I am missing something again, but I do not see an appropriate
exported alternative in the kernel.