Re: [PATCH v12 19/45] KVM: guest_memfd: Zero page while getting pfn

On 8/31/26 02:25, Ackerley Tng via B4 Relay wrote:

From: Ackerley Tng <redacted>

Move the folio initialization logic from kvm_gmem_get_pfn() into
__kvm_gmem_get_pfn() to also zero pages if the page is to be used in
kvm_gmem_populate().

With in-place conversion, the existing data in a guest_memfd page can be
populated into guest memory through platform-specific ioctls.

Without first zeroing the page obtained using __kvm_gmem_get_pfn(), it
might contain uninitialized host memory, which would leak to the guest if
the populate completes.

guest_memfd pages are zeroed at most once in the page's entire lifetime
with guest_memfd, and that is tracked using the uptodate flag.

Zeroing the page in __kvm_gmem_get_pfn() is chosen over zeroing in
kvm_gmem_get_folio() since other flows, such as a future write() syscall,
can get a page, write to the page and then set page uptodate without
zeroing.

There may be some performance penalty due to redundant zeroing, but this
would pale in comparison to the cost of actually assigning the page to the
VM.

This aligns with the concept of zeroing before first use - the other place
where zeroing happens is in kvm_gmem_fault_user_mapping().

On populate failure, the page is not re-zeroed, since on SNP, if firmware
rejects a CPUID page, the expected CPUID values provided by firmware are
returned to userspace via page contents. More generally, page contents may
be modified on populate failure.

Don't mark the page uptodate again after populating, since the page would
already be marked uptodate before the post_populate() call.

Reviewed-by: Fuad Tabba <redacted>
Tested-by: Shivank Garg <redacted>
Reviewed-by: Xiaoyao Li <redacted>
Reviewed-by: Binbin Wu <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Ackerley Tng <redacted>
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Reviewed-by: David Hildenbrand (Arm) <david@kernel.org>

-- 
Cheers,

David