Re: Kernel Shadow Stacks Versus XFEATURE_MASK_GUEST_SUPERVISOR

[Dave Hansen <dave.hansen@intel.com>]

On 10/23/26 14:00, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 10/23/26 21:03, Dave Hansen wrote:
...
> If you want to quickly work around for your !CONFIG_KVM kernel, I would do
> 
> #ifdef CONFIG_KVM
> /* Supervisor features which are enabled only in guest FPUs */
> #define XFEATURE_MASK_GUEST_SUPERVISOR  XFEATURE_MASK_CET_KERNEL
> #else
> #define XFEATURE_MASK_GUEST_SUPERVISOR  0
> #endif

Yup, that'd work for sure. Thanks!

>> Any thoughts on what we should do?
>>
>> Actually context switching XFEATURE_CET_KERNEL seems kinda silly in a
>> lot of ways. PL0_SSP can always be derived _and_ it isn't actually even
>> needed at context switch time, only when running userspace.
> 
> True but, just to understand, what is the performance like if you
> actually use XSAVES/XRSTORS to update SSP0 on context switches instead
> of WRMSR+cache?  Hopefully the microcode does a bunch of optimizations
> as well.

First, we can use WRMSRNS for this MSR, so it's faster than usual.
Second, on kernel=>kernel context switches that don't go out to
userspace, it doesn't need to be written at all. It's kinda like the
user FPU state. Third, I'm actually reusing the fred_ssp0 cache, so
further reduces the incremental cost. Fourth, it's not _really_
context-switched. There's never a need to read the register. It can
always be conjured out of thin air. It's possible to only write the
register, never read it.

I can benchmark it, but I seriously doubt that an XSAVE/XRSTOR at
context switch of three fields is going to beat an WRMSRNS of one.

>> I could just aggressively blow away my SSP0 cache any time an XRSTOR
>> touches XFEATURE_CET_KERNEL. That would be easy. But it also seems silly
>> that XFEATURE_CET_KERNEL is being blown away at _all_ during normal
>> context switches. Heck, it goes further than that because:
>>
>> fpregs_restore_userregs() does:
>>
>>     restore_fpregs_from_fpstate(fpu->fpstate,
>>                     XFEATURE_MASK_FPSTATE);
>>
>> Where XFEATURE_MASK_FPSTATE contains XFEATURE_MASK_SUPERVISOR_SUPPORTED.
> 
> The actual mask used by restore_fpregs_from_fpstate is tighter though,
> it's "fpu_kernel_cfg.max_features & XFEATURE_MASK_FPSTATE".
> 
> Can you replace fpu_kernel_cfg.max_features with some fpstate->xyz
> (sorry too late to think it through :)) that has CET_KERNEL for the
> guest FPU and not for the regular one?

Sure I can give that a shot.

There's one minor issue in that we need to init dynamic features which
_aren't_ in fpstate->xfeatures when context switching. There's a little
note about this in restore_fpregs_from_fpstate().

I think what you're getting at is that we need _something_ to say that
KVM fpstates should muck with XFEATURE_CET_KERNEL and task fpstates
should not, even though the task ones have space for XFEATURE_CET_KERNEL.

That's certainly doable.

>> So a "restore_userregs" function is blowing away supervisor state.
>>
>> IOW, I think we're using XFEATURE_MASK_FPSTATE a bit too broadly.
>>
>> I'd like to get to a place where only the KVM code even has
>> XFEATURE_CET_KERNEL in its RFBM.
> That I agree, but I think it can be handled in {save,restore}
> _fpregs_to_fpstate().

I think I understand what you're going after at least. I'll poke at it a
bit more.

Thanks for the thoughts!