Re: [PATCH v8 5/5] x86/tdx: Add Quote generation support

Sathyanarayanan Kuppuswamy
2022-07-22T21:19:03Z

+ Jun

On 7/22/22 12:13 PM, Dave Hansen wrote:
> On 7/22/22 12:05, Isaku Yamahata wrote:
>>> So, the quote portion of this is basically a bidirectional blob sender.
>>> It's to send a blob between guest userspace to host userspace.
>>>
>>> Do we *REALLY* need specific driver functionality for this? For
>>> instance, is there no existing virtio device that can send blobs back
>>> and forth?
>> It's virtio-vsock. If virtio-vsock is available, the communication works.
>> However, some users would like to disable virtio-vsock on their environment for
>> some reasons. Even virtio at all. Especially for confidential computing use
>> case. It's their choice. It can't be assumed that virtio is available.
>>
>> The goal is VMM-agnostic (but TDX-specific) interface for that.
>
> You're basically saying that every confidential computing technology
> should have its own host user <-> guest kernel <-> guest user ABI.
> That's insanity. If we do this, we need *one* interface that says "talk
> to the hypervisor" that's common for all hypervisors and hardware
> vendors, or at least more than *one*.
>
> We don't need a way to talk to hypervisors for Intel systems and another
> for AMD and yet another on whatever.

For cases where your platform does not want to support or enable the generic
interface (like vsock), isn't it better to have a fallback approach? I am not
saying we should have such an ABI for all cases. But attestation is a must-have
feature for the TDX guest, and we want to support it in all TD guest platforms.
I think the GHCI ABI is added to meet this requirement.

Jun/Isaku, if you are aware of the exact requirement for this hypercall, please
share it. Also let us know your comments on this topic.

--
Sathyanarayanan Kuppuswamy
Linux Kernel Developer