kvm PCI assignment & VFIO ramblings

[David Gibson]

On Fri, Aug 05, 2011 at 09:10:09AM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
> On Fri, 2011-08-05 at 20:42 +1000, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> > Right. In fact to try to clarify the problem for everybody, I think we
> > can distinguish two different classes of "constraints" that can
> > influence the grouping of devices:
> > 
> >  1- Hard constraints. These are typically devices using the same RID or
> > where the RID cannot be reliably guaranteed (the later is the case with
> > some PCIe-PCIX bridges which will take ownership of "some" transactions
> > such as split but not all). Devices like that must be in the same
> > domain. This is where PowerPC adds to what x86 does today the concept
> > that the domains are pre-existing, since we use the RID for error
> > isolation & MMIO segmenting as well. so we need to create those domains
> > at boot time.
> > 
> >  2- Softer constraints. Those constraints derive from the fact that not
> > applying them risks enabling the guest to create side effects outside of
> > its "sandbox". To some extent, there can be "degrees" of badness between
> > the various things that can cause such constraints. Examples are shared
> > LSIs (since trusting DisINTx can be chancy, see earlier discussions),
> > potentially any set of functions in the same device can be problematic
> > due to the possibility to get backdoor access to the BARs etc...
> 
> This is what I've been trying to get to, hardware constraints vs system
> policy constraints.
> 
> > Now, what I derive from the discussion we've had so far, is that we need
> > to find a proper fix for #1, but Alex and Avi seem to prefer that #2
> > remains a matter of libvirt/user doing the right thing (basically
> > keeping a loaded gun aimed at the user's foot with a very very very
> > sweet trigger but heh, let's not start a flamewar here :-)
> 
> Doesn't your own uncertainty of whether or not to allow this lead to the
> same conclusion, that it belongs in userspace policy?  I don't think we
> want to make white lists of which devices we trust to do DisINTx
> correctly part of the kernel interface, do we?  Thanks,

Yes, but the overall point is that both the hard and soft constraints
are much easier to handle if a group or iommu domain or whatever is a
persistent entity that can be set up once-per-boot by the admin with
whatever degree of safety they want, rather than a transient entity
tied to an fd's lifetime, which must be set up correctly, every time,
by the thing establishing it.

-- 
David Gibson			| I'll have my music baroque, and my code
david AT gibson.dropbear.id.au	| minimalist, thank you.  NOT _the_ _other_
				| _way_ _around_!
http://www.ozlabs.org/~dgibson