Re: [dpdk-dev] Having troubles binding an SR-IOV VF to uio_pci_generic on Amazon instance

[Vlad Zolotarov <vladz@cloudius-systems.com>]

On 09/30/15 22:06, Vlad Zolotarov wrote:
>
>
> On 09/30/15 21:55, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 09:15:56PM +0300, Vlad Zolotarov wrote:
>>>
>>> On 09/30/15 18:26, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
>>>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 03:50:09PM +0300, Vlad Zolotarov wrote:
>>>>> How not virtualizing iommu forces "all or nothing" approach?
>>>> Looks like you can't limit an assigned device to only access part of
>>>> guest memory that belongs to a given process.  Either let it access 
>>>> all
>>>> of guest memory ("all") or don't assign the device ("nothing").
>>> Ok. A question then: can u limit the assigned device to only access 
>>> part of
>>> the guest memory even if iommu was virtualized?
>> That's exactly what an iommu does - limit the device io access to 
>> memory.
>
> If it does - it will continue to do so with or without the patch and 
> if it doesn't (for any reason) it won't do it even without the patch.
> So, again, the above (rhetorical) question stands. ;)
>
> I think Avi has already explained quite in detail why security is 
> absolutely a non issue in regard to this patch or in regard to UIO in 
> general. Security has to be enforced by some other  means like iommu.
>
>>
>>> How would iommu
>>> virtualization change anything?
>> Kernel can use an iommu to limit device access to memory of
>> the controlling application.
>
> Ok, this is obvious but what it has to do with enabling using 
> MSI/MSI-X interrupts support in uio_pci_generic? kernel may continue 
> to limit the above access with this support as well.
>
>>
>>> And why do we care about an assigned device
>>> to be able to access all Guest memory?
>> Because we want to be reasonably sure a kernel memory corruption
>> is not a result of a bug in a userspace application.
>
> Corrupting Guest's memory due to any SW misbehavior (including bugs) 
> is a non-issue by design - this is what HV and Guest machines were 
> invented for. So, like Avi also said, instead of trying to enforce 
> nobody cares about 

Let me rephrase: by pretending enforcing some security promise that u 
don't actually fulfill... ;)

> we'd rather make the developers life easier instead (by applying the 
> not-yet-completed patch I'm working on).
>>
>