Subject: Re: [PATCH 01/14] KVM: arm64: Donate MMIO to the hypervisor

From: Vincent Donnefort <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2026 10:39:07 +0000

On Tue, Mar 10, 2026 at 12:49:20PM +0000, Sebastian Ene wrote:
> From: Mostafa Saleh <[email-masked]>
> 
> Add a function to donate MMIO to the hypervisor so IOMMU hypervisor
> drivers can use that to protect the MMIO of IOMMU.
> The initial attempt to implement this was to have a new flag to
> "___pkvm_host_donate_hyp" to accept MMIO. However that had many problems,
> it was quite intrusive for host/hyp to check/set page state to make it
> aware of MMIO and to encode the state in the page table in that case.
> Which is called in paths that can be sensitive to performance (FFA, VMs..)
> 
> As donating MMIO is very rare, and we don’t need to encode the full
> state, it’s reasonable to have a separate function to do this.
> It will init the host s2 page table with an invalid leaf with the owner ID
> to prevent the host from mapping the page on faults.

I am not sure I agree here:

* Differentiating between MMIO and Memory is just a fast binary search into the
  memory regions.

* host_donate_hyp isn't a fast path even for memory regions anyway.

* Having common functions for changing ownership is more and more helpful (see the
  SME dvmsync workaround).

* There's nothing preventing from having a range here which is safely handled
  already by host_donate_hyp()

> 
> Also, prevent kvm_pgtable_stage2_unmap() from removing owner ID from
> stage-2 PTEs, as this can be triggered from recycle logic under memory
> pressure. There is no code relying on this, as all ownership changes is
> done via kvm_pgtable_stage2_set_owner()
> 
> For error path in IOMMU drivers, add a function to donate MMIO back
> from hyp to host.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Mostafa Saleh <[email-masked]>
> ---
>  arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/include/nvhe/mem_protect.h |  2 +
>  arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/mem_protect.c         | 90 +++++++++++++++++++
>  arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/pgtable.c                  |  9 +-
>  3 files changed, 94 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/include/nvhe/mem_protect.h b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/include/nvhe/mem_protect.h
> index 5f9d56754e39..8b617e6fc0e0 100644
> --- a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/include/nvhe/mem_protect.h
> +++ b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/include/nvhe/mem_protect.h
> @@ -31,6 +31,8 @@ enum pkvm_component_id {
>  };
>  
>  extern unsigned long hyp_nr_cpus;
> +int __pkvm_host_donate_hyp_mmio(u64 pfn);
> +int __pkvm_hyp_donate_host_mmio(u64 pfn);
>  
>  int __pkvm_prot_finalize(void);
>  int __pkvm_host_share_hyp(u64 pfn);
> diff --git a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/mem_protect.c b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/mem_protect.c
> index 38f66a56a766..0808367c52e5 100644
> --- a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/mem_protect.c
> +++ b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/mem_protect.c
> @@ -784,6 +784,96 @@ int __pkvm_host_unshare_hyp(u64 pfn)
>  	return ret;
>  }
>  
> +int __pkvm_host_donate_hyp_mmio(u64 pfn)
> +{
> +	u64 phys = hyp_pfn_to_phys(pfn);
> +	void *virt = __hyp_va(phys);
> +	int ret;
> +	kvm_pte_t pte;
> +
> +	if (addr_is_memory(phys))
> +		return -EINVAL;
> +
> +	host_lock_component();
> +	hyp_lock_component();
> +
> +	ret = kvm_pgtable_get_leaf(&host_mmu.pgt, phys, &pte, NULL);
> +	if (ret)
> +		goto unlock;
> +
> +	if (pte && !kvm_pte_valid(pte)) {
> +		ret = -EPERM;
> +		goto unlock;
> +	}
> +
> +	ret = kvm_pgtable_get_leaf(&pkvm_pgtable, (u64)virt, &pte, NULL);
> +	if (ret)
> +		goto unlock;
> +	if (pte) {
> +		ret = -EBUSY;
> +		goto unlock;
> +	}
> +
gg> +	ret = pkvm_create_mappings_locked(virt, virt + PAGE_SIZE, PAGE_HYP_DEVICE);
> gg+	if (ret)
> +		goto unlock;
> +	/*
> +	 * We set HYP as the owner of the MMIO pages in the host stage-2, for:
> +	 * - host aborts: host_stage2_adjust_range() would fail for invalid non zero PTEs.
> +	 * - recycle under memory pressure: host_stage2_unmap_dev_all() would call
> +	 *   kvm_pgtable_stage2_unmap() which will not clear non zero invalid ptes (counted).
> +	 * - other MMIO donation: Would fail as we check that the PTE is valid or empty.
> +	 */
> +	WARN_ON(host_stage2_try(kvm_pgtable_stage2_set_owner, &host_mmu.pgt, phys,
> +				PAGE_SIZE, &host_s2_pool, PKVM_ID_HYP));
> +unlock:
> +	hyp_unlock_component();
> +	host_unlock_component();
> +
> +	return ret;
> +}
> +
> +int __pkvm_hyp_donate_host_mmio(u64 pfn)
> +{
> +	u64 phys = hyp_pfn_to_phys(pfn);
> +	u64 virt = (u64)__hyp_va(phys);
> +	size_t size = PAGE_SIZE;
> +	int ret;
> +	kvm_pte_t pte;
> +
> +	if (addr_is_memory(phys))
> +		return -EINVAL;
> +
> +	host_lock_component();
> +	hyp_lock_component();
> +
> +	ret = kvm_pgtable_get_leaf(&pkvm_pgtable, (u64)virt, &pte, NULL);
> +	if (ret)
> +		goto unlock;
> +	if (!kvm_pte_valid(pte)) {
> +		ret = -ENOENT;
> +		goto unlock;
> +	}
> +
> +	ret = kvm_pgtable_get_leaf(&host_mmu.pgt, phys, &pte, NULL);
> +	if (ret)
> +		goto unlock;
> +
> +	if (FIELD_GET(KVM_INVALID_PTE_OWNER_MASK, pte) != PKVM_ID_HYP) {
> +		ret = -EPERM;
> +		goto unlock;
> +	}
> +
> +	WARN_ON(kvm_pgtable_hyp_unmap(&pkvm_pgtable, virt, size) != size);
> +	WARN_ON(host_stage2_try(kvm_pgtable_stage2_set_owner, &host_mmu.pgt, phys,
> +				PAGE_SIZE, &host_s2_pool, PKVM_ID_HOST));
> +unlock:
> +	hyp_unlock_component();
> +	host_unlock_component();
> +
> +	return ret;
> +}
> +
>  int __pkvm_host_donate_hyp(u64 pfn, u64 nr_pages)
>  {
>  	u64 phys = hyp_pfn_to_phys(pfn);
> diff --git a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/pgtable.c b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/pgtable.c
> index 9b480f947da2..d954058e63ff 100644
> --- a/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/pgtable.c
> +++ b/arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/pgtable.c
> @@ -1152,13 +1152,8 @@ static int stage2_unmap_walker(const struct kvm_pgtable_visit_ctx *ctx,
>  	kvm_pte_t *childp = NULL;
>  	bool need_flush = false;
>  
> -	if (!kvm_pte_valid(ctx->old)) {
> -		if (stage2_pte_is_counted(ctx->old)) {
> -			kvm_clear_pte(ctx->ptep);
> -			mm_ops->put_page(ctx->ptep);
> -		}
> -		return 0;
> -	}
> +	if (!kvm_pte_valid(ctx->old))
> +		return stage2_pte_is_counted(ctx->old) ? -EPERM : 0;
>  
>  	if (kvm_pte_table(ctx->old, ctx->level)) {
>  		childp = kvm_pte_follow(ctx->old, mm_ops);
> -- 
> 2.53.0.473.g4a7958ca14-goog
>