Re: Mapping active GDT

[Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>]

On 03/11/2017 08:06 AM, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> On 11/03/2017 03:58, Boris Ostrovsky wrote:
>> On 03/10/2017 09:39 PM, Boris Ostrovsky wrote:
>>> I am looking into GDT remap series [0] which crashes PV guests and it
>>> seems that the problem lies in the fact that we cannot establish new
>>> mapping to an already existing GDT.
>>>
>>> The mapping is created by
>>>
>>> +static inline void setup_fixmap_gdt(int cpu)
>>> +{
>>> +       __set_fixmap(get_cpu_gdt_ro_index(cpu),
>>> +                    __pa(get_cpu_gdt_rw(cpu)), PAGE_KERNEL);
>>> +}
>>>
>>> with get_cpu_gdt_rw(cpu) being the current GDT pointer. This results in
>>>
>>> (XEN) mm.c:2570:d94v0 Bad type (saw 5400000000000001 != exp
>>> 7000000000000000) for mfn 1538fb (pfn 3e809)
>>> (XEN) mm.c:1022:d94v0 Could not get page type PGT_writable_page
>>> (XEN) mm.c:1074:d94v0 Error getting mfn 1538fb (pfn 3e809) from L1 entry
>>> 80000001538fb063 for l1e_owner=94, pg_owner=94
> The problem here is that you are trying to create a writeable mapping to
> the GDT frame.
>
> Allowing the guest writeable access would be a security hole, as it is
> trivial to escalate privilege under those circumstances.

Right, and I saw the same failure symptoms (hypervisor errors) even when
I replaced PAGE_KERNEL with PAGE_KERNEL_RO.

And then I realized that I was on a branch with other unrelated changes,
so I switched the branch and then things started to work. Thus my mea
culpa below.

-boris

>
> ~Andrew
>
>>> (after a small change to xen_set_fixmap(), which I think was missing)
>>>
>>> Before I try to come up with a fix I wanted to check here to see if this
>>> (not being able to map active GDT) is indeed the case.
>> Uhm.. Nevermind. The change in xen_set_fixmap() is probably sufficient.
>>
>> I was working with wrong branch ;-( Sorry for the noise.
>>
>> -boris
>>
>>> -boris
>>>
>>>
>>> [0]
>>> https://lists.xenproject.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2017-03/msg00869.html
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Xen-devel mailing list
>>> Xen-devel@lists.xen.org
>>> https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel


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