Re: [RFC PATCH 1/1] virtio: write back features before verify

From: Christian Borntraeger
Date: Fri Oct 01 2021 - 10:34:46 EST


Am 30.09.21 um 03:20 schrieb Halil Pasic:
This patch fixes a regression introduced by commit 82e89ea077b9
("virtio-blk: Add validation for block size in config space") and
enables similar checks in verify() on big endian platforms.

The problem with checking multi-byte config fields in the verify
callback, on big endian platforms, and with a possibly transitional
device is the following. The verify() callback is called between
config->get_features() and virtio_finalize_features(). That we have a
device that offered F_VERSION_1 then we have the following options
either the device is transitional, and then it has to present the legacy
interface, i.e. a big endian config space until F_VERSION_1 is
negotiated, or we have a non-transitional device, which makes
F_VERSION_1 mandatory, and only implements the non-legacy interface and
thus presents a little endian config space. Because at this point we
can't know if the device is transitional or non-transitional, we can't
know do we need to byte swap or not.

The virtio spec explicitly states that the driver MAY read config
between reading and writing the features so saying that first accessing
the config before feature negotiation is done is not an option. The
specification ain't clear about setting the features multiple times
before FEATURES_OK, so I guess that should be fine.

I don't consider this patch super clean, but frankly I don't think we
have a ton of options. Another option that may or man not be cleaner,
but is also IMHO much uglier is to figure out whether the device is
transitional by rejecting _F_VERSION_1, then resetting it and proceeding
according tho what we have figured out, hoping that the characteristics
of the device didn't change.

Signed-off-by: Halil Pasic <pasic@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Fixes: 82e89ea077b9 ("virtio-blk: Add validation for block size in config space")
Reported-by: markver@xxxxxxxxxx

Just to make this more obvious. Since 5.14 DASD devices as backing for virtio-blk no
longer work as the block size is no longer reported to the guest. So we need a fix
for the issue.