[PATCH v4 7/9] KVM: nSVM: Fail emulation of VMRUN/VMLOAD/VMSAVE if mapping vmcb12 fails

From: Yosry Ahmed

Date: Mon Mar 16 2026 - 16:28:49 EST


KVM currently injects a #GP if mapping vmcb12 fails when emulating
VMRUN/VMLOAD/VMSAVE. This is not architectural behavior, as #GP should
only be injected if the physical address is not supported or not
aligned. Instead, handle it as an emulation failure, similar to how nVMX
handles failures to read/write guest memory in several emulation paths.

When virtual VMLOAD/VMSAVE is enabled, if vmcb12's GPA is not mapped in
the NPTs a VMEXIT(#NPF) will be generated, and KVM will install an MMIO
SPTE and emulate the instruction if there is no corresponding memslot.
x86_emulate_insn() will return EMULATION_FAILED as VMLOAD/VMSAVE are not
handled as part of the twobyte_insn cases.

Even though this will also result in an emulation failure, it will only
result in a straight return to userspace if
KVM_CAP_EXIT_ON_EMULATION_FAILURE is set. Otherwise, it would inject #UD
and only exit to userspace if not in guest mode. So the behavior is
slightly different if virtual VMLOAD/VMSAVE is enabled.

Fixes: 3d6368ef580a ("KVM: SVM: Add VMRUN handler")
Reported-by: Jim Mattson <jmattson@xxxxxxxxxx>
Signed-off-by: Yosry Ahmed <yosry@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/x86/kvm/svm/nested.c | 6 ++----
arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c | 6 ++----
2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 8 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/nested.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/nested.c
index 75943a607777c..73c0df0a81f0e 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/nested.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/nested.c
@@ -1121,10 +1121,8 @@ int nested_svm_vmrun(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu)

ret = nested_svm_copy_vmcb12_to_cache(vcpu, vmcb12_gpa);
if (ret) {
- if (ret == -EFAULT) {
- kvm_inject_gp(vcpu, 0);
- return 1;
- }
+ if (ret == -EFAULT)
+ return kvm_handle_memory_failure(vcpu, X86EMUL_IO_NEEDED, NULL);

/* Advance RIP past VMRUN as part of the nested #VMEXIT. */
return kvm_skip_emulated_instruction(vcpu);
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
index 9f6f60fc8c133..1843627fa4cac 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/svm/svm.c
@@ -2201,10 +2201,8 @@ static int vmload_vmsave_interception(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, bool vmload)
return 1;
}

- if (kvm_vcpu_map(vcpu, gpa_to_gfn(vmcb12_gpa), &map)) {
- kvm_inject_gp(vcpu, 0);
- return 1;
- }
+ if (kvm_vcpu_map(vcpu, gpa_to_gfn(vmcb12_gpa), &map))
+ return kvm_handle_memory_failure(vcpu, X86EMUL_IO_NEEDED, NULL);

vmcb12 = map.hva;

--
2.53.0.851.ga537e3e6e9-goog