Re: [patch 0/3] x86/fpu: Prevent FPU state corruption

Jason A. Donenfeld
2022-05-25T20:36:30Z

Hey folks,

An update on the VirtualBox thing (not that anybody here actually
cares, but at least I've been nerd sniped):

It looks like they've got a patch out now for it:
https://www.virtualbox.org/attachment/ticket/20914/vbox-linux-5.18.patch
It seems like they call kernel_fpu_begin() before loading guest fpu
regs, but then immediately re-enable preemption. Yikes. So if another
kernel task preempts that one and uses the fpu... And it makes me
wonder the extent of this breakage prior (maybe not just hardirq?
unsure.). Also, it apparently is only enabled for 5.18, so that
doesn't help with old kernels. Oh well. All that development happens
behind closed doors so probably not worth losing sleep over.

Anyway, from a kernel perspective, there's now no urgency for us to do
anything about this. VirtualBox won't compile for 5.18 without that
patch, and given that Oracle fixed it, it doesn't appear to be our
bug. Case closed. So if we go ahead with removing hardirq fpu support,
it won't be due to this but for other motivations.

Jason