Patch "KVM: MMU: fix ept=0/pte.u=1/pte.w=0/CR0.WP=0/CR4.SMEP=1/EFER.NX=0 combo" has been added to the 4.4-stable tree

This is a note to let you know that I've just added the patch titled

    KVM: MMU: fix ept=0/pte.u=1/pte.w=0/CR0.WP=0/CR4.SMEP=1/EFER.NX=0 combo

to the 4.4-stable tree which can be found at:
http://www.kernel.org/git/?p=linux/kernel/git/stable/stable-queue.git;a=summary

The filename of the patch is:

     kvm-mmu-fix-ept-0-pte.u-1-pte.w-0-cr0.wp-0-cr4.smep-1-efer.nx-0-combo.patch

and it can be found in the queue-4.4 subdirectory.

If you, or anyone else, feels it should not be added to the stable tree, please let <[email protected]> know about it.

From: Paolo Bonzini <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 12:13:39 +0100
Subject: KVM: MMU: fix ept=0/pte.u=1/pte.w=0/CR0.WP=0/CR4.SMEP=1/EFER.NX=0 combo

From: Paolo Bonzini <[email protected]>

commit 844a5fe219cf472060315971e15cbf97674a3324 upstream.

Yes, all of these are needed. :) This is admittedly a bit odd, but kvm-unit-tests access.flat tests this if you run it with "-cpu host" and of course ept=0.

KVM runs the guest with CR0.WP=1, so it must handle supervisor writes specially when pte.u=1/pte.w=0/CR0.WP=0. Such writes cause a fault when U=1 and W=0 in the SPTE, but they must succeed because CR0.WP=0. When KVM gets the fault, it sets U=0 and W=1 in the shadow PTE and restarts execution. This will still cause a user write to fault, while supervisor writes will succeed. User reads will fault spuriously now, and KVM will then flip U and W again in the SPTE (U=1, W=0). User reads will be enabled and supervisor writes disabled, going back to the originary situation where supervisor writes fault spuriously.

When SMEP is in effect, however, U=0 will enable kernel execution of this page. To avoid this, KVM also sets NX=1 in the shadow PTE together with U=0. If the guest has not enabled NX, the result is a continuous stream of page faults due to the NX bit being reserved.

The fix is to force EFER.NX=1 even if the CPU is taking care of the EFER switch. (All machines with SMEP have the CPU_LOAD_IA32_EFER vm-entry control, so they do not use user-return notifiers for EFER---if they did, EFER.NX would be forced to the same value as the host).

There is another bug in the reserved bit check, which I've split to a separate patch for easier application to stable kernels.

---
 Documentation/virtual/kvm/mmu.txt |    3 ++-
 arch/x86/kvm/vmx.c                |   36 +++++++++++++++++++++++-------------
 2 files changed, 25 insertions(+), 14 deletions(-)

@@ -358,7 +358,8 @@ In the first case there are two addition
 - if CR4.SMEP is enabled: since we've turned the page into a kernel page,
   the kernel may now execute it.  We handle this by also setting spte.nx.
   If we get a user fetch or read fault, we'll change spte.u=1 and
-  spte.nx=gpte.nx back.
+  spte.nx=gpte.nx back.  For this to work, KVM forces EFER.NX to 1 when
+  shadow paging is in use.
 - if CR4.SMAP is disabled: since the page has been changed to a kernel
   page, it can not be reused when CR4.SMAP is enabled. We set
   CR4.SMAP && !CR0.WP into shadow page's role to avoid this case. Note,

@@ -1792,26 +1792,31 @@ static void reload_tss(void)
 
 static bool update_transition_efer(struct vcpu_vmx *vmx, int efer_offset)
 {
-	u64 guest_efer;
-	u64 ignore_bits;
+	u64 guest_efer = vmx->vcpu.arch.efer;
+	u64 ignore_bits = 0;
 
-	guest_efer = vmx->vcpu.arch.efer;
+	if (!enable_ept) {
+		/*
+		 * NX is needed to handle CR0.WP=1, CR4.SMEP=1.  Testing
+		 * host CPUID is more efficient than testing guest CPUID
+		 * or CR4.  Host SMEP is anyway a requirement for guest SMEP.
+		 */
+		if (boot_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_SMEP))
+			guest_efer |= EFER_NX;
+		else if (!(guest_efer & EFER_NX))
+			ignore_bits |= EFER_NX;
+	}
 
 	/*
-	 * NX is emulated; LMA and LME handled by hardware; SCE meaningless
-	 * outside long mode
+	 * LMA and LME handled by hardware; SCE meaningless outside long mode.
 	 */
-	ignore_bits = EFER_NX | EFER_SCE;
+	ignore_bits |= EFER_SCE;
 #ifdef CONFIG_X86_64
 	ignore_bits |= EFER_LMA | EFER_LME;
 	/* SCE is meaningful only in long mode on Intel */
 	if (guest_efer & EFER_LMA)
 		ignore_bits &= ~(u64)EFER_SCE;
 #endif
-	guest_efer &= ~ignore_bits;
-	guest_efer |= host_efer & ignore_bits;
-	vmx->guest_msrs[efer_offset].data = guest_efer;
-	vmx->guest_msrs[efer_offset].mask = ~ignore_bits;
 
 	clear_atomic_switch_msr(vmx, MSR_EFER);
 

@@ -1822,16 +1827,21 @@ static bool update_transition_efer(struc
 	 */
 	if (cpu_has_load_ia32_efer ||
 	    (enable_ept && ((vmx->vcpu.arch.efer ^ host_efer) & EFER_NX))) {
-		guest_efer = vmx->vcpu.arch.efer;
 		if (!(guest_efer & EFER_LMA))
 			guest_efer &= ~EFER_LME;
 		if (guest_efer != host_efer)
 			add_atomic_switch_msr(vmx, MSR_EFER,
 					      guest_efer, host_efer);
 		return false;
-	}
+	} else {
+		guest_efer &= ~ignore_bits;
+		guest_efer |= host_efer & ignore_bits;
 
-	return true;
+		vmx->guest_msrs[efer_offset].data = guest_efer;
+		vmx->guest_msrs[efer_offset].mask = ~ignore_bits;
+
+		return true;
+	}
 }
 
 static unsigned long segment_base(u16 selector)

Patches currently in stable-queue which might be from [email protected] are

queue-4.4/kvm-cap-halt-polling-at-exactly-halt_poll_ns.patch queue-4.4/kvm-vmx-disable-pebs-before-a-guest-entry.patch queue-4.4/kvm-mmu-fix-reserved-bit-check-for-ept-0-cr0.wp-0-cr4.smep-1-efer.nx-0.patch queue-4.4/kvm-mmu-fix-ept-0-pte.u-1-pte.w-0-cr0.wp-0-cr4.smep-1-efer.nx-0-combo.patch queue-4.4/kvm-s390-correct-fprs-on-sigp-stop-and-store-status.patch