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x86/xen: update xen_oldmem_pfn_is_ram() documentation
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After removing /dev/kmem, sanitizing /proc/kcore and handling /dev/mem,
this series tackles the last sane way how a VM could accidentially
access logically unplugged memory managed by a virtio-mem device:
/proc/vmcore

When dumping memory via "makedumpfile", PG_offline pages, used by
virtio-mem to flag logically unplugged memory, are already properly
excluded; however, especially when accessing/copying /proc/vmcore "the
usual way", we can still end up reading logically unplugged memory part
of a virtio-mem device.

Patch #1-#3 are cleanups.  Patch #4 extends the existing
oldmem_pfn_is_ram mechanism.  Patch #5-torvalds#7 are virtio-mem refactorings
for patch torvalds#8, which implements the virtio-mem logic to query the state
of device blocks.

Patch torvalds#8:
 "Although virtio-mem currently supports reading unplugged memory in the
  hypervisor, this will change in the future, indicated to the device
  via a new feature flag. We similarly sanitized /proc/kcore access
  recently.
  [...]
  Distributions that support virtio-mem+kdump have to make sure that the
  virtio_mem module will be part of the kdump kernel or the kdump
  initrd; dracut was recently [2] extended to include virtio-mem in the
  generated initrd. As long as no special kdump kernels are used, this
  will automatically make sure that virtio-mem will be around in the
  kdump initrd and sanitize /proc/vmcore access -- with dracut"

This is the last remaining bit to support
VIRTIO_MEM_F_UNPLUGGED_INACCESSIBLE [3] in the Linux implementation of
virtio-mem.

Note: this is best-effort.  We'll never be able to control what runs
inside the second kernel, really, but we also don't have to care: we
only care about sane setups where we don't want our VM getting zapped
once we touch the wrong memory location while dumping.  While we usually
expect sane setups to use "makedumfile", nothing really speaks against
just copying /proc/vmcore, especially in environments where HWpoisioning
isn't typically expected.  Also, we really don't want to put all our
trust completely on the memmap, so sanitizing also makes sense when just
using "makedumpfile".

[1] https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
[2] dracutdevs/dracut#1157
[3] https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/virtio-comment/202109/msg00021.html

This patch (of 9):

The callback is only used for the vmcore nowadays.

Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/[email protected]
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <[email protected]>
Reviewed-by: Boris Ostrovsky <[email protected]>
Cc: Thomas Gleixner <[email protected]>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <[email protected]>
Cc: Borislav Petkov <[email protected]>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <[email protected]>
Cc: Juergen Gross <[email protected]>
Cc: Stefano Stabellini <[email protected]>
Cc: "Michael S. Tsirkin" <[email protected]>
Cc: Jason Wang <[email protected]>
Cc: Dave Young <[email protected]>
Cc: Baoquan He <[email protected]>
Cc: Vivek Goyal <[email protected]>
Cc: Michal Hocko <[email protected]>
Cc: Oscar Salvador <[email protected]>
Cc: Mike Rapoport <[email protected]>
Cc: "Rafael J. Wysocki" <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <[email protected]>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <[email protected]>
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davidhildenbrand authored and torvalds committed Nov 9, 2021
1 parent 0658a09 commit 434b90f
Showing 1 changed file with 3 additions and 6 deletions.
9 changes: 3 additions & 6 deletions arch/x86/xen/mmu_hvm.c
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -9,12 +9,9 @@

#ifdef CONFIG_PROC_VMCORE
/*
* This function is used in two contexts:
* - the kdump kernel has to check whether a pfn of the crashed kernel
* was a ballooned page. vmcore is using this function to decide
* whether to access a pfn of the crashed kernel.
* - the kexec kernel has to check whether a pfn was ballooned by the
* previous kernel. If the pfn is ballooned, handle it properly.
* The kdump kernel has to check whether a pfn of the crashed kernel
* was a ballooned page. vmcore is using this function to decide
* whether to access a pfn of the crashed kernel.
* Returns 0 if the pfn is not backed by a RAM page, the caller may
* handle the pfn special in this case.
*/
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