Re: [libvirt] AMD SEV's /dev/sev permissions and probing QEMU for capabilities

On 1/18/19 3:39 AM, Erik Skultety wrote: > Hi, > this is a summary of a private discussion I've had with guys CC'd on this email > about finding a solution to [1] - basically, the default permissions on > /dev/sev (below) make it impossible to query for SEV platform capabilities, > since by default we run QEMU as qemu:qemu when probing for capabilities. It's > worth noting is that this is only relevant to probing, since for a proper QEMU > VM we create a mount namespace for the process and chown all the nodes (needs a > SEV fix though). > > # ll /dev/sev > crw-------. 1 root root > > I suggested either force running QEMU as root for probing (despite the obvious > security implications) or using namespaces for probing too. Dan argued that > this would have a significant perf impact and suggested we ask systemd to add a > global udev rule. > > I proceeded with cloning [1] to systemd and creating an udev rule that I planned > on submitting to systemd upstream - the initial idea was to mimic /dev/kvm and > make it world accessible to which Brijesh from AMD expressed a concern that > regular users might deplete the resources (limit on the number of guests > allowed by the platform). During private discussion I didn't realized that we are discussing a probe issue hence things I have said earlier may not be applicable during the probe. The /dev/sev is managed by the CCP (aka PSP) driver. The /dev/sev is used for communicating with the SEV FW running inside the PSP. The SEV FW offers platform and guest specific services. The guest specific services are used during the guest launch, these services are available through KVM driver only. Whereas the platform services can be invoked at anytime. A typical platform specific services are: - importing certificates - exporting certificates - querying the SEV FW version etc etc In case of the probe we are not launch SEV guest hence we should not be worried about depleting the SEV ASID resources. IIRC, libvirt uses QEMP query-sev-capabilities to probe the SEV support. QEMU executes the below sequence to complete the request: 1. Exports the platform certificates  (this is when /dev/sev is accessed). 2. Read the host MSR to determine the C-bit and reduced phys-bit position I don't see any reason why we can't give world a 'read' permission to /dev/sev. Anyone should be able to export the certificates and query

status etc. I think the main issue is reading MSR -- which I believe is putting a 'root' requirement. Am I missing something ? > But since the limit is claimed to be around 4, Dan FYI, the limit on EPYC is 15.