FAILED: patch "[PATCH] KVM: nSVM: Reject KVM_SET_NESTED_STATE if L1 has EFER.LMA=1" failed to apply to 6.18-stable tree

The patch below does not apply to the 6.18-stable tree.
If someone wants it applied there, or to any other stable or longterm tree, then please email the backport, including the original git commit id to <[email protected]>.

To reproduce the conflict and resubmit, you may use the following commands:

git fetch https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/ linux-6.18.y
git checkout FETCH_HEAD
git cherry-pick -x 5dc500a354cc8e109df678076ae3488094649468
# <resolve conflicts, build, test, etc.>
git commit -s
git send-email --to '<[email protected]>' --in-reply-to '2026110436-sequel-runner-492c@gregkh' --subject-prefix 'PATCH 6.18.y' 'HEAD^..'

Possible dependencies:

thanks,

greg k-h

------------------ original commit in Linus's tree ------------------

From 5dc500a354cc8e109df678076ae3488094649468 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Sean Christopherson <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 2 Sep 2026 16:20:24 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] KVM: nSVM: Reject KVM_SET_NESTED_STATE if L1 has EFER.LMA=1
&& EFER.LME=0

Reject KVM_SET_NESTED_STATE if the incoming L1 host state has what is effectively an impossible EFER combination of LMA=1 but LME=0, i.e. if the state says long mode is active but not enabled. Unlike VMX, SVM doesn't have an explicit consistent check for the illegal combination; presumably hardware simply ignores EFER.LMA if EFER.LME=0.

Unfortunately, KVM doesn't ignore EFER.LMA in this case and consumes the illegal state when constructing the shadow MMU for L2. E.g. if userspace also clears CR4.PAE, then kvm_calc_cpu_role() will compute a role with 4 or 5 levels of paging, but shadow_mmu_init_context() will wire up the MMU to use the paging32 template, which maxes out its levels at 2.

Note, the "real badness" is effectively the same as what happened with the nVMX bug fixed by commit 112e66017bff ("KVM: nVMX: add missing consistency checks for CR0 and CR4"). Unfortunately, the sanity check added by commit 72e2fb24a0b0 ("KVM: x86/mmu: Bug the VM if a vCPU ends up in long mode without PAE enabled") doesn't work for this case, since L2 state is active at the time of the page fault, but it's L1 that has the bad state.

index 73f37b050d0a..49fb10ad1f9f 100644
@@ -2028,6 +2028,7 @@ static int svm_set_nested_state(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu,
 	if (!(save->cr0 & X86_CR0_PG) ||
 	    !(save->cr0 & X86_CR0_PE) ||
 	    (save->rflags & X86_EFLAGS_VM) ||
+	    ((save->efer & EFER_LMA) && !(save->efer & EFER_LME)) ||
 	    !nested_vmcb_check_save(vcpu, &save_cached, false))
 		goto out_free;
 

From: Sean Christopherson <[email protected]>

[ Upstream commit 5dc500a354cc8e109df678076ae3488094649468 ]

Reject KVM_SET_NESTED_STATE if the incoming L1 host state has what is effectively an impossible EFER combination of LMA=1 but LME=0, i.e. if the state says long mode is active but not enabled. Unlike VMX, SVM doesn't have an explicit consistent check for the illegal combination; presumably hardware simply ignores EFER.LMA if EFER.LME=0.

Unfortunately, KVM doesn't ignore EFER.LMA in this case and consumes the illegal state when constructing the shadow MMU for L2. E.g. if userspace also clears CR4.PAE, then kvm_calc_cpu_role() will compute a role with 4 or 5 levels of paging, but shadow_mmu_init_context() will wire up the MMU to use the paging32 template, which maxes out its levels at 2.

Note, the "real badness" is effectively the same as what happened with the nVMX bug fixed by commit 112e66017bff ("KVM: nVMX: add missing consistency checks for CR0 and CR4"). Unfortunately, the sanity check added by commit 72e2fb24a0b0 ("KVM: x86/mmu: Bug the VM if a vCPU ends up in long mode without PAE enabled") doesn't work for this case, since L2 state is active at the time of the page fault, but it's L1 that has the bad state.

---
 arch/x86/kvm/svm/nested.c | 1 +
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)

index 064a2bb9cf8ed..49cc457a4c370 100644
@@ -1880,6 +1880,7 @@ static int svm_set_nested_state(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu,
 	if (!(save->cr0 & X86_CR0_PG) ||
 	    !(save->cr0 & X86_CR0_PE) ||
 	    (save->rflags & X86_EFLAGS_VM) ||
+	    ((save->efer & EFER_LMA) && !(save->efer & EFER_LME)) ||
 	    !__nested_vmcb_check_save(vcpu, &save_cached))
 		goto out_free;
 

2.53.0