Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] kvm: svm: Add support for additional SVM NPF error codes

Brijesh Singh
2017-07-31T13:30:25Z

Hi Paolo,

On 07/27/2017 11:27 AM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 23/11/2016 18:01, Brijesh Singh wrote:
>>
>> + /*
>> + * Before emulating the instruction, check if the error code
>> + * was due to a RO violation while translating the guest page.
>> + * This can occur when using nested virtualization with nested
>> + * paging in both guests. If true, we simply unprotect the page
>> + * and resume the guest.
>> + *
>> + * Note: AMD only (since it supports the PFERR_GUEST_PAGE_MASK used
>> + * in PFERR_NEXT_GUEST_PAGE)
>> + */
>> + if (error_code == PFERR_NESTED_GUEST_PAGE) {
>> + kvm_mmu_unprotect_page(vcpu->kvm, gpa_to_gfn(cr2));
>> + return 1;
>> + }
>
>
> What happens if L1 is mapping some memory that is read only in L0? That
> is, the L1 nested page tables make it read-write, but the L0 shadow
> nested page tables make it read-only.
>
> Accessing it would cause an NPF, and then my guess is that the L1 guest
> would loop on the failing instruction instead of just dropping the write.
>

Not sure if I am able to follow your use case. Could you please explain me
in bit detail.

The purpose of the code above was really for when we resume from the L2 guest
back to the L1 guest. The L1 page tables are marked RO when in the L2 guest
(for shadow paging) as I recall, so when we come back to the L1 guest, it can
get a fault since its page tables are not marked writeable at L0 as they need to be.

-Brijesh