RE: [Xen-devel] Xen Advisory 5 (CVE-2011-3131) IOMMU fault livelock

["Kay, Allen M" <allen.m.kay@xxxxxxxxx>]

Catching up on an old thread ...

If I understand correctly, the proposal is to check for VT-d faults in 
do_softirq() handler.  If so, we probably don't even need to enable VT-d MSI 
interrupt at all if iommu_debug is not set, basically handling VT-d faults with 
polling method.

This sounds fine to me as long as we still turn on VT-d MSI interrupt for 
iommu_debug case.

Allen

-----Original Message-----
From: xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:xen-devel-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jan Beulich
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 8:59 AM
To: Tim Deegan
Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Xen.org security team
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Xen Advisory 5 (CVE-2011-3131) IOMMU fault livelock

>>> On 16.08.11 at 17:06, Tim Deegan <tim@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> At 08:03 +0100 on 16 Aug (1313481813), Jan Beulich wrote:
>> >>> On 15.08.11 at 11:26, Tim Deegan <tim@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> > At 15:48 +0100 on 12 Aug (1313164084), Jan Beulich wrote:
>> >> >>> On 12.08.11 at 16:09, Tim Deegan <tim@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>> >> > At 14:53 +0100 on 12 Aug (1313160824), Jan Beulich wrote:
>> >> >> > This issue is resolved in changeset 23762:537ed3b74b3f of
>> >> >> > xen-unstable.hg, and 23112:84e3706df07a of xen-4.1-testing.hg.
>> >> >> 
>> >> >> Do you really think this helps much? Direct control of the device means
>> >> >> it could also (perhaps on a second vCPU) constantly re-enable the bus
>> >> >> mastering bit. 
>> >> > 
>> >> > That path goes through qemu/pciback, so at least lets Xen schedule the
>> >> > dom0 tools.
>> >> 
>> >> Are you sure? If (as said) the guest uses a second vCPU for doing the
>> >> config space accesses, I can't see how this would save the pCPU the
>> >> fault storm is occurring on.
>> > 
>> > Hmmm.  Yes, I see what you mean.
>> 
>> Actually, a second vCPU may not even be needed: Since the "fault"
>> really is an external interrupt, if that one gets handled on a pCPU other
>> than the one the guest's vCPU is running on, it could execute such a
>> loop even in that case.
>> 
>> As to yesterdays softirq-based handling thoughts - perhaps the clearing
>> of the bus master bit on the device should still be done in the actual IRQ
>> handler, while the processing of the fault records could be moved out to
>> a softirq.
> 
> Hmmm.  I like the idea of using a softirq but in fact by the time we've
> figured out which BDF to silence we've pretty much done handling the
> fault.

Ugly, but yes, indeed.

> Reading the VTd docs it looks like we can just ack the IOMMU fault
> interrupt and it won't send any more until we clear the log, so we can
> leave the whole business to a softirq.  Delaying that might cause the
> log to overflow, but that's not necessarily the end of the world.
> Looks like we can do the same on AMD by disabling interrupt generation
> in the main handler and reenabling it in the softirq.
> 
> Is there any situation where we rally care terribly about the IOfault
> logs overflowing?

As long as older entries don't get overwritten, I don't think that's
going to be problematic. The more that we basically shut off the
offending device(s).

Jan


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