Re: [PATCH v3 1/7] KVM: SVM: Drop RAX check for SVM instructions from the emulator

[Yosry Ahmed]

On Mon, Mar 16, 2026 at 06:49:35AM -0700, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 15, 2026 at 5:55 AM Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > On 3/13/26 01:10, Yosry Ahmed wrote:
> > > Outside of forced emulation or code stream rewriting,
> >
> > But isn't that the point? Due to code stream rewriting or intentional
> > usage of stale TLBs (so that the processor executes one instruction and
> > the emulator another), the emulator cannot assume that it will "never be
> > invoked with an actually illegal RAX".
> >
> > I realize that I'm late to the show, so I apologize in advance if this
> > has been discussed before.
> 
> Thanks for chiming in. FWIW, I initially intended to fix this check
> instead of removing it, the removal came after a discussion with Sean,
> see https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/abH0RdnM29Xyh_4G@xxxxxxxxxx for more
> context.
> 
> TL;DR is that the emulator support for VMRUN/VMLOAD/VMSAVE is
> broken/unsupported anyway, beyond checking for intercepts and
> pre-intercept exceptions (well, even that is broken), and the RAX
> check should be after that architecturally.

No, this is wrong. I believe Sean's read of the APM was incomplete, he
quoted this part (which I did include in my changelog):

  Generally, instruction intercepts are checked after simple exceptions
  (such as #GP—when CPL is incorrect—or #UD) have been checked, but
  before exceptions related to memory accesses (such as page faults) and
  exceptions based on specific operand values.

But in table 15-7 for instruction intercepts, the rows for
VMRUN/VMLOAD/VMSAVE have this in the priority column:

  Checks exceptions (#GP) before the intercept.

Unlike other rows that specify #GP on CPL != 0.

Additionally, in the VMRUN pseudocode, we have this:

  IF ((MSR_EFER.SVME == 0) || (!PROTECTED_MODE))
    EXCEPTION [#UD] // This instruction can only be executed in
                       protected mode with SVM enabled
  IF (CPL != 0) // This instruction is only allowed at CPL 0
    EXCEPTION [#GP]
  IF (rAX contains an unsupported physical address)
    EXCEPTION [#GP]
  IF (intercepted(VMRUN))
    #VMEXIT (VMRUN)

The pseudocode for VMLOAD/VMSAVE does not have the intercepted() check
though, but I assume it's the save as VMRUN. I did confirm that with
vls=0, vmload_interception() is not being called on VMLOAD if RAX=-1ULL.

So I think the RAX check is actually intended to happen before the
intercept. I think I will go back to fixing the RAX check instead of
dropping it.