Acceptance criteria for vfio-pci device specific driver variants

Overview

The vfio-pci driver exists as a device agnostic driver using the system IOMMU and relying on the robustness of platform fault handling to provide isolated device access to userspace. While the vfio-pci driver does include some device specific support, further extensions for yet more advanced device specific features are not sustainable. The vfio-pci driver has therefore split out vfio-pci-core as a library that may be reused to implement features requiring device specific knowledge, ex. saving and loading device state for the purposes of supporting migration.

In support of such features, it’s expected that some device specific variants may interact with parent devices (ex. SR-IOV PF in support of a user assigned VF) or other extensions that may not be otherwise accessible via the vfio-pci base driver. Authors of such drivers should be diligent not to create exploitable interfaces via these interactions or allow unchecked userspace data to have an effect beyond the scope of the assigned device.

New driver submissions are therefore requested to have approval via sign-off/ack/review/etc for any interactions with parent drivers. Additionally, drivers should make an attempt to provide sufficient documentation for reviewers to understand the device specific extensions, for example in the case of migration data, how is the device state composed and consumed, which portions are not otherwise available to the user via vfio-pci, what safeguards exist to validate the data, etc. To that extent, authors should additionally expect to require reviews from at least one of the listed reviewers, in addition to the overall vfio maintainer.