KVM: x86/MMU: Allow NX huge pages to be disabled on a per-vm basis

In some cases, the NX hugepage mitigation for iTLB multihit is not
needed for all guests on a host. Allow disabling the mitigation on a
per-VM basis to avoid the performance hit of NX hugepages on trusted
workloads.

In order to disable NX hugepages on a VM, ensure that the userspace
actor has permission to reboot the system. Since disabling NX hugepages
would allow a guest to crash the system, it is similar to reboot
permissions.

Ideally, KVM would require userspace to prove it has access to KVM's
nx_huge_pages module param, e.g. so that userspace can opt out without
needing full reboot permissions.  But getting access to the module param
file info is difficult because it is buried in layers of sysfs and module
glue. Requiring CAP_SYS_BOOT is sufficient for all known use cases.

Suggested-by: Jim Mattson <jmattson@google.com>
Reviewed-by: David Matlack <dmatlack@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Ben Gardon <bgardon@google.com>
Message-Id: <20220613212523.3436117-9-bgardon@google.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 30 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
index c1b3b2ea8ee0..7ce0c6fe166d 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
@@ -4324,6 +4324,7 @@ int kvm_vm_ioctl_check_extension(struct kvm *kvm, long ext)
 	case KVM_CAP_SYS_ATTRIBUTES:
 	case KVM_CAP_VAPIC:
 	case KVM_CAP_ENABLE_CAP:
+	case KVM_CAP_VM_DISABLE_NX_HUGE_PAGES:
 		r = 1;
 		break;
 	case KVM_CAP_EXIT_HYPERCALL:
@@ -6184,6 +6185,35 @@ split_irqchip_unlock:
 		}
 		mutex_unlock(&kvm->lock);
 		break;
+	case KVM_CAP_VM_DISABLE_NX_HUGE_PAGES:
+		r = -EINVAL;
+
+		/*
+		 * Since the risk of disabling NX hugepages is a guest crashing
+		 * the system, ensure the userspace process has permission to
+		 * reboot the system.
+		 *
+		 * Note that unlike the reboot() syscall, the process must have
+		 * this capability in the root namespace because exposing
+		 * /dev/kvm into a container does not limit the scope of the
+		 * iTLB multihit bug to that container. In other words,
+		 * this must use capable(), not ns_capable().
+		 */
+		if (!capable(CAP_SYS_BOOT)) {
+			r = -EPERM;
+			break;
+		}
+
+		if (cap->args[0])
+			break;
+
+		mutex_lock(&kvm->lock);
+		if (!kvm->created_vcpus) {
+			kvm->arch.disable_nx_huge_pages = true;
+			r = 0;
+		}
+		mutex_unlock(&kvm->lock);
+		break;
 	default:
 		r = -EINVAL;
 		break;