[RFC PATCH V2 5/5] vhost: access vq metadata through kernel virtual address

Michael S. Tsirkin
2019-03-08T02:21:03Z

On Thu, Mar 07, 2019 at 02:17:20PM -0500, Jerome Glisse
wrote:
> > It's because of all these issues that I preferred just accessing
> > userspace memory and handling faults. Unfortunately there does not
> > appear to exist an API that whitelists a specific driver along the
lines
> > of "I checked this code for speculative info leaks, don't add
barriers
> > on data path please".
>
> Maybe it would be better to explore adding such helper then remapping
> page into kernel address space ?

I explored it a bit (see e.g. thread around: "__get_user slower than
get_user") and I can tell you it's not trivial given the issue is
around
security.  So in practice it does not seem fair to keep a significant
optimization out of kernel because *maybe* we can do it differently even
better :)

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MST