[dpdk-dev] Having troubles binding an SR-IOV VF to uio_pci_generic on Amazon instance

[Avi Kivity]

On 09/30/2015 03:27 PM, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 03:16:04PM +0300, Vlad Zolotarov wrote:
>>
>> On 09/30/15 15:03, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
>>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 02:53:19PM +0300, Vlad Zolotarov wrote:
>>>> On 09/30/15 14:41, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
>>>>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 02:26:01PM +0300, Vlad Zolotarov wrote:
>>>>>> The whole idea is to bypass kernel. Especially for networking...
>>>>> ... on dumb hardware that doesn't support doing that securely.
>>>> On a very capable HW that supports whatever security requirements needed
>>>> (e.g. 82599 Intel's SR-IOV VF devices).
>>> Network card type is irrelevant as long as you do not have an IOMMU,
>>> otherwise you would just use e.g. VFIO.
>> Sorry, but I don't follow your logic here - Amazon EC2 environment is a
>> example where there *is* iommu but it's not virtualized
>> and thus VFIO is
>> useless and there is an option to use directly assigned SR-IOV networking
>> device there where using the kernel drivers impose a performance impact
>> compared to user space UIO-based user space kernel bypass mode of usage. How
>> is it irrelevant? Could u, pls, clarify your point?
>>
> So it's not even dumb hardware, it's another piece of software
> that forces an "all or nothing" approach where either
> device has access to all VM memory, or none.
> And this, unfortunately, leaves you with no secure way to
> allow userspace drivers.

Some setups don't need security (they are single-user, single 
application). But do need a lot of performance (like 5X-10X 
performance).  An example is OpenVSwitch, security doesn't help it at 
all and if you force it to use the kernel drivers you cripple it.

Also, I'm root.  I can do anything I like, including loading a patched 
pci_uio_generic.  You're not providing _any_ security, you're simply 
making life harder for users.

> So it makes even less sense to add insecure work-arounds in the kernel.
> It seems quite likely that by the time the new kernel reaches
> production X years from now, EC2 will have a virtual iommu.

I can adopt a new kernel tomorrow.  I have no influence on EC2.