Re: [PATCH v6 08/12] PCI: liveupdate: Inherit ACS flags in incoming preserved devices

[Pranjal Shrivastava]

On Fri, May 22, 2026 at 08:24:06PM +0000, David Matlack wrote:
> Inherit Access Control Services (ACS) flags on all incoming preserved
> devices (endpoints and upstream bridges) during a Live Update.
> 
> Inheriting ACS flags avoids changing routing rules while memory
> transactions are in flight from preserved devices. This is also strictly
> necessary to ensure that IOMMU group assignments do not change across
> a Live Update for preserved devices, as changing ACS configurations can
> split or merge IOMMU groups.
> 
> Cache the inherited ACS controls established by the previous kernel in
> struct pci_dev so that ACS controls do not change after a reset
> (pci_restore_state() calls pci_enable_acs()).
> 
> To simplify ACS inheritance, reject preserving any devices that require
> quirks to enable ACS as those quirks would also have to take Live Update
> into account.
> 
> Signed-off-by: David Matlack <dmatlack@xxxxxxxxxx>
> ---
>  drivers/pci/liveupdate.c       | 68 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  drivers/pci/liveupdate.h       | 11 ++++++
>  drivers/pci/pci.c              |  5 +++
>  drivers/pci/pci.h              |  5 +++
>  drivers/pci/quirks.c           |  7 ++++
>  include/linux/pci_liveupdate.h |  6 +++
>  6 files changed, 102 insertions(+)
> 

[...]

>  
> +void pci_liveupdate_init_acs(struct pci_dev *dev)
> +{
> +	guard(rwsem_read)(&pci_liveupdate.rwsem);
> +
> +	if (!dev->acs_cap || !dev->liveupdate.incoming)
> +		return;
> +
> +	pci_read_config_word(dev, dev->acs_cap + PCI_ACS_CTRL, &dev->liveupdate.acs_ctrl);

I might be thinking out loud here, but as an attacker, this motivates me
to somehow hack the EP FW to mis-report the PCI_ACS_CTRL register across
a liveupdate to fool the incoming kernel. If the FW feeds a 0, it silently
strips ACS protections.

Should we also serialize ACS state in ser somehow to ensure we aren't 
fooled by something like this?

> +}
> +
> +int pci_liveupdate_enable_acs(struct pci_dev *dev)
> +{
> +	u16 acs_ctrl = dev->liveupdate.acs_ctrl;
> +	u16 acs_cap = dev->acs_cap;
> +
> +	/*
> +	 * Use liveupdate.was_preserved instead of liveupdate.incoming since the
> +	 * device's ACS controls should not change even after the device is
> +	 * finished participating in the Live Update.
> +	 */
> +	if (!dev->liveupdate.was_preserved)
> +		return -EINVAL;
> +
> +	/*
> +	 * The previous kernel should not have preserved any devices that
> +	 * require device-specific quirks to enable ACS, but if such a device is
> +	 * detected, log a big warning and fall back to the normal enable ACS
> +	 * path.
> +	 */

Nit: It might be worth adding a note here that this can also happen if a
new device-specific ACS quirk is introduced in the incoming kernel for a
device that was preserved by the old kernel (which didn't have the quirk).
In such cases, the two kernels are essentially non-LUO-compatible..

> +	if (pci_need_dev_specific_enable_acs(dev)) {
> +		pci_warn(dev, "Device-specific quirk required to enable ACS!\n");
> +		WARN_ON_ONCE(true);
> +		return -EINVAL;
> +	}
> +
> +	if (acs_cap)
> +		pci_write_config_word(dev, acs_cap + PCI_ACS_CTRL, acs_ctrl);
> +
> +	return 0;
> +}
> +
>  /**
>   * pci_liveupdate_is_incoming() - Check if a device is incoming-preserved
>   * @dev: The PCI device to check

[...]

Thanks,
Praan