diff options
| author | Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com> | 2018-08-05 16:07:47 +0200 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> | 2018-08-15 18:13:00 +0200 |
| commit | 1110cb2a343f506287d46e0c614512afaa7c7906 (patch) | |
| tree | 0dabd0257e8427a631fcae48513a4453a0b4c14d /Documentation/admin-guide | |
| parent | c15396d3f74f6cd7c084bdcc1004714a40cb268a (diff) | |
KVM: VMX: Tell the nested hypervisor to skip L1D flush on vmentry
commit 5b76a3cff011df2dcb6186c965a2e4d809a05ad4 upstream
When nested virtualization is in use, VMENTER operations from the nested
hypervisor into the nested guest will always be processed by the bare metal
hypervisor, and KVM's "conditional cache flushes" mode in particular does a
flush on nested vmentry. Therefore, include the "skip L1D flush on
vmentry" bit in KVM's suggested ARCH_CAPABILITIES setting.
Add the relevant Documentation.
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/admin-guide')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst | 21 |
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst b/Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst index 5dadb4503ec9..bae52b845de0 100644 --- a/Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst +++ b/Documentation/admin-guide/l1tf.rst @@ -546,6 +546,27 @@ available: EPT can be disabled in the hypervisor via the 'kvm-intel.ept' parameter. +3.4. Nested virtual machines +"""""""""""""""""""""""""""" + +When nested virtualization is in use, three operating systems are involved: +the bare metal hypervisor, the nested hypervisor and the nested virtual +machine. VMENTER operations from the nested hypervisor into the nested +guest will always be processed by the bare metal hypervisor. If KVM is the +bare metal hypervisor it wiil: + + - Flush the L1D cache on every switch from the nested hypervisor to the + nested virtual machine, so that the nested hypervisor's secrets are not + exposed to the nested virtual machine; + + - Flush the L1D cache on every switch from the nested virtual machine to + the nested hypervisor; this is a complex operation, and flushing the L1D + cache avoids that the bare metal hypervisor's secrets are exposed to the + nested virtual machine; + + - Instruct the nested hypervisor to not perform any L1D cache flush. This + is an optimization to avoid double L1D flushing. + .. _default_mitigations: |