Re: [PATCH 09/16] KVM: x86/mmu: Move private vs. shared check above slot validity checks

[Sean Christopherson]

On Wed, Mar 06, 2024, Kai Huang wrote:
> 
> 
> On 28/02/2024 3:41 pm, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> > Prioritize private vs. shared gfn attribute checks above slot validity
> > checks to ensure a consistent userspace ABI.  E.g. as is, KVM will exit to
> > userspace if there is no memslot, but emulate accesses to the APIC access
> > page even if the attributes mismatch.
> 
> IMHO, it would be helpful to explicitly say that, in the later case (emulate
> APIC access page) we still want to report MEMORY_FAULT error first (so that
> userspace can have chance to fixup, IIUC) instead of emulating directly,
> which will unlikely work.

Hmm, it's not so much that emulating directly won't work, it's that KVM would be
violating its ABI.  Emulating APIC accesses after userspace converted the APIC
gfn to private would still work (I think), but KVM's ABI is that emulated MMIO
is shared-only.

FWIW, I doubt there's a legitmate use case for converting the APIC gfn to private,
this is purely to ensure KVM has simple, consistent rules for how private vs.
shared access work.