On 2017-08-22 12:34, Gustavo Lima Chaves wrote:
> * Henning Schild <[email protected]> [2017-08-22 13:08:47 +0000]:
> 
>> Am Mon, 21 Aug 2017 17:20:56 -0700
>> schrieb Gustavo Lima Chaves <[email protected]>:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> what's the intention with the current design where inmates have access
>>> to cell_state (COMM_REGION_GENERIC_HEADER)? Is this safe? I was able
>>> to replicate what apic-demo.c does WRT that in a Zephyr binary as
>>> well, just to be sure.
>>
>> I am afraid i do not get the question. With "have access" you mean they
>> can read and write the value and the change becomes visible to others
>> i.e. hypervisor and root-cell?
> 
> Yeah, I'm mainly concerned with cells being parked scenario (and
> somehow faking another state different than JAILHOUSE_CELL_FAILED),
> but I guess we're fine at panic_park(), since the cell won't be able
> to run any instruction from that point on, right?

Right, once we panic'ed all cell CPUs, there is no more possibility for
that cell to change the state.

> 
>>
>> There are three values that actually have a meaning and change the
>> behavior of the hypervisor (_FAILED, _SHUT_DOWN and RUNNING_LOCKED).
>> Setting itself to FAILED or SHUT_DOWN the cell would not receive
>> messages anymore, does not seem too bad for others. And we already
>> discussed what RUNNING_LOCKED is for.
>>
>> Could you describe a scenario where the control of this variable is
>> unsafe/problematic?
>>
>>> Isn't ./tools/jailhouse cell list or, better yet,
>>> /sys/devices/jailhouse/cells/XXX/state a means for the root cell to
>>> watch cell states in order to act on them (assuming "open" model from
>>> https://events.linuxfoundation.org/sites/events/files/slides/ELCE2016-Jailhouse-Tutorial.pdf)?
>>> If so, how can we trust the cells setting their states and not the
>>> hypervisor only?
>>
>> I think the only case in which a cell would want to / have to set the
>> state itself is RUNNING_LOCKED. You can probably invent a few custom
>> states that only your cell and your rootcell sysfs watchdog know about,
>> if you want to have such a thing.
>>
>> Maybe you have an example for the problematic case where a cell fails
>> to update its state causing trouble in the rest of the system?
> 
> I think I get the workings now, thanks!
> 

Well, your concerns made me look at the code again. And if you haven't
done that for a while, I see things that you missed before:

It seems like even cells that have JAILHOUSE_CELL_PASSIVE_COMMREG set
can cause some effect when setting themselves to RUNNING_LOCKED. That
would be a bug, because passive cells shall not be able to lock the
system. Requires a second check, though, maybe also for other cases. Any
concrete findings or patches always welcome!

Jan

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