Re: [PATCH v2 0/5] KVM: VMX: Fix single stepping with emulated instructions

From: Kyle Huey
Date: Wed Nov 30 2016 - 13:53:00 EST


On Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 10:41 AM, Radim KrÄmÃÅ <rkrcmar@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 2016-11-29 12:40-0800, Kyle Huey:
>> KVM does not currently honor the trap flag when emulating instructions that
>> cause VM exits. This is observable from guest userspace, try stepping on a
>> CPUID instruction in gdb in a KVM guest. The program will stop two
>> instructions after CPUID.
>>
>> To fix this, add kvm_skip_emulated_instruction that calls
>> kvm_x86_ops->skip_emulated_instruction and then kvm_vcpu_check_singlestep to
>> check for RFLAGS.TF. Patch 4 does this. To handle both the guest setting TF
>> and the KVM_GUESTDBG_SINGLESTEP cases we need to be able to indicate to
>> callees that an exit to userspace is required. Patches 1-3 are largely
>> plumbing to make this possible.
>>
>> Traps triggered by task switch instructions require some additional handling
>> and are not implemented. KVM_GUESTDBG_SINGLESTEP traps can be squashed by
>> certain instructions which also trigger userspace exits, such as HALT,
>> MOV CR8, and IO instructions. I believe (although I have not tested) that
>> KVM will simply generate another trap on the next instruction, so this is
>> no worse than the current behavior.
>>
>> Patch 5 fixes an existing bug where kvm_vcpu_check_singlestep clears
>> RFLAGS.TF when generating a singlestep trap. Bare silicon does not do this.
>
> Looks good, applied to kvm/queue.

Great! Thank you.

>> These patches only fix this issue for VMX, and the handful of SVM cases that
>> call the shared kvm_complete_insn_gp. I don't have AMD silicon to test on.
>
> Added to TODO,
>
> Thanks.

- Kyle