> > These are the type of pages which KVM is currently rejecting. Is this
> > something that KVM can support?
>
> I'm not opposed to it.  My complaint is that this series is incomplete in 
> that it
> allows mapping the memory into the guest, but doesn't support accessing the 
> memory
> from KVM itself.  That means for things to work properly, KVM is relying on 
> the
> guest to use the memory in a limited capacity, e.g. isn't using the memory as
> general purpose RAM.  That's not problematic for your use case, because 
> presumably
> the memory is used only by the vGPU, but as is KVM can't enforce that 
> behavior in
> any way.
>
> The really gross part is that failures are not strictly punted to userspace;
> the resulting error varies significantly depending on how the guest 
> "illegally"
> uses the memory.
>
> My first choice would be to get the amdgpu driver "fixed", but that's likely 
> an
> unreasonable request since it sounds like the non-KVM behavior is working as 
> intended.
>
> One thought would be to require userspace to opt-in to mapping this type of 
> memory
> by introducing a new memslot flag that explicitly states that the memslot 
> cannot
> be accessed directly by KVM, i.e. can only be mapped into the guest.  That 
> way,
> KVM has an explicit ABI with respect to how it handles this type of memory, 
> even
> though the semantics of exactly what will happen if userspace/guest violates 
> the
> ABI are not well-defined.  And internally, KVM would also have a clear 
> touchpoint
> where it deliberately allows mapping such memslots, as opposed to the more 
> implicit
> behavior of bypassing ensure_pfn_ref().

Is it well defined when KVM needs to directly access a memslot? At
least for x86, it looks like most of the use cases are related to
nested virtualization, except for the call in
emulator_cmpxchg_emulated. Without being able to specifically state
what should be avoided, a flag like that would be difficult for
userspace to use.

> If we're clever, we might even be able to share the flag with the "guest 
> private
> memory"[*] concept being pursued for confidential VMs.
>
> [*] 
> https://lore.kernel.org/all/[email protected]
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