International Business Machines Corporation

Lisa Cranton Heller

Damian Leo Osisek

Dan F Greiner

Timothy John Slegel

Charles W Gainey, Jr

Jonathan D Bradbury

Fadi Y Busaba

Erwin F Pfeffer

Mark S Farrell

Donald W Schmidt

Gustav E Sittmann, Iii

Ute Gaertner

Jeffrey Paul Kubala

Charles Franklin Webb

Patrick M West, Jr

Christian Jacobi

Jennifer A Navarro

Phil C Yeh

Jane Helen Bartik

Frank Siegfried Lehnert

Peter Kenneth Szwed

Christian Borntraeger

Martin Schwidefsky

Kenneth E Plambeck

Rebecca S Wisniewski

Markus Helms

Uwe Brandt

William Alan Holder

Fadi Yusuf Busaba

Hubertus Franke

Michael F Fee

Reinhard Theodor Buendgen

Thomas G Koehler

Timothy J Siegel

Joerg Deutschle

Randall W Philley

Ingo Adlung

Claudio Imbrenda

Ray Mansell

Jong Hyuk Choi

Jonathan David Bradbury

Charles Gainey

Donald William Schmidt

Anthony Saporito

Leslie W Wyman

Thomas Köhler

Utz Bacher

Geoffrey Owen Blandy

Kenneth Anthony Lauricella

Robert Michael Dinkjian

Bruce A Wagar

Nelson S Xu

Robert A Skaggs

Thomas W Seigendall

Steven R Kordus

Damian Osisek

Michael K Gschwind

Eric M Schwarz

Giora Biran

Elpida Tzortzatos

Lee Evan Eisen

Bruce C Giamei

Jaya Srikrishnan

Janet R Easton

Richard P Tarcza

Norbert Hagspiel

Michael Billeci

Heiko Carstens

Hanno Ulrich

Christine M Yost

Alexander Mesh

Ophir Erez

Michael T Huffer

Harald Boehm

Donald G O'Brien

Chung-Lung K Shum

Brian Robert Prasky

James J Bonanno

Gregory William Alexander

Bernd Nerz

Christine Comins Jones

Michael P Mullen

Robert E Murray

Viktor Mihajlovski

Charles E Webb

Janosch Andreas Frank

Gustav E Sittman, Iii

Cynthia Sittmann, Legal Representative

Charles (deceased) Gainey

Jr Gainey

Iii Sittmann

Frank Lehnert

A central processing unit measurement facility is virtualized in order to support concurrent use of the facility by multiple guests executing within a virtual environment. Each guest of the environment has independent control over disablement/enablement of the facility for that guest.

Virtualization of a central processing unit measurement facility

A virtual machine is dispatched and based on the dispatch, a determination is made as to whether a select area of memory expected to be accessible to the virtual machine and used in communication between the virtual machine and an operating system is accessible to the virtual machine. Based on determining that the select area of memory is inaccessible to the virtual machine, virtual machine execution is exited with a select interception code.

Inaccessible prefix pages during virtual machine execution

An instruction is provided to perform a reset address translation protection operation when executed. Executing the instruction includes determining, by a processor, that an address translation protection bit in a specified translation table entry associated with a storage block is to be reset. Based on determining that the address translation protection bit is to be reset, executing the instruction includes resetting the address translation protection bit to deactivate write protection for the storage block. The resetting is absent waiting for an action by one or more other processors of the computing environment.

Reset dynamic address translation protection instruction

In a processor supporting execution of a plurality of functions of an instruction, an instruction blocking value is set for blocking one or more of the plurality of functions, such that an attempt to execute one of the blocked functions, will result in a program exception and the instruction will not execute, however the same instruction will be able to execute any of the functions that are not blocked functions.

Function virtualization facility for blocking instruction function of a multi-function instruction of a virtual processor

A method, computer program product, and a system where a secure interface control determines whether an instance of a secure guest image can execute based on metadata. The secure interface control ('SC') obtains metadata linked to an image of a secure guest of an owner and managed by the hypervisor that includes control(s) that indicates whether the hypervisor is permitted to execute an instance of a secure guest generated with the image in the computing system based on system setting(s) in the computing system. The SC intercepts a command by the hypervisor to initiate the instance. The SC determines the presence or the absence of system setting(s) in the computing system. The SC determines if the hypervisor is permitted to execute the instance. If so, the SC enables initiation of the instance by the hypervisor. If not, the SC ignores the command.

Secure execution guest owner environmental controls

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, a computer implemented method includes receiving, at a secure interface control of a computer system, an access request for a data structure related to a secure entity in a secure domain of the computer system. The secure interface control can check for a virtual storage address associated with a location of the data structure. The secure interface control can request an address translation using a virtual address space of a non-secure entity of the computer system based on determining that the location of the data structure is associated with the virtual storage address. The secure interface control can access the data structure based on a result of the address translation.

Host virtual address space for secure interface control storage

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, a computer implemented method includes receiving a secure access request for a secure page of memory at a secure interface control of a computer system. The secure interface control can check a disable virtual address compare state associated with the secure page. The secure interface control can disable a virtual address check in accessing the secure page to support mapping of a plurality of virtual addresses to a same absolute address to the secure page based on the disable virtual address compare state being set and/or to support secure pages that are accessed using an absolute address and do not have an associated virtual address.

Sharing secure memory across multiple security domains

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, a computer implemented method includes receiving a query for an amount of storage in memory of a computer system to be donated to a secure interface control of the computer system. The secure interface control can determine the amount of storage to be donated based on a plurality of secure entities supported by the secure interface control as a plurality of predetermined values. The secure interface control can return a response to the query indicative of the amount of storage as a response to the query. A donation of storage to secure for use by the secure interface control can be received based on the response to the query.

Secure storage query and donation

Operating system deactivation of write protection for a storage block is provided absent quiescing of processors in a multi-processor computing environment. The process includes receiving an address translation protection exception interrupt resulting from an attempted write access by a processor to a storage block, and determining by the operating system whether write protection for the storage block is active. Based on write protection for the storage block not being active, the operating system issues an instruction to clear or modify translation lookaside buffer entries of the processor associated with the storage block, absent waiting for an action by another processor of multiple processors of the computing environment, to facilitate write access to the storage block proceeding at the processor.

Operating system deactivation of storage block write protection absent quiescing of processors

An computer-implemented method according to examples includes receiving, by a secure interface control of a computing system, a request by a requestor to access a page in a memory of the computing system. The method further includes, responsive to determining that the requestor is a non-secure requestor and responsive to a secure-storage bit being set, prohibiting access to the page without performing an authorization check. The method further includes, responsive to determining that the requestor is a secure requestor, performing the authorization check.

Secure storage isolation

According to one or more embodiments of the present invention, a computer implemented method includes enabling, by a secure interface control of a computer system, a non-secure entity of the computer system to access a page of memory shared between the non-secure entity and a secure domain of the computer system based on the page being marked as non-secure with a secure storage protection indicator of the page being clear. The secure interface control can verify that the secure storage protection indicator of the page is clear prior to allowing the non-secure entity to access the page. The secure interface control can provide a secure entity of the secure domain with access to the page absent a check of the secure storage protection indicator of the page.

Storage sharing between a secure domain and a non-secure entity

A method for testing storage protection hardware includes receiving by a non-trusted entity that is executing on a host server, a request to dispatch a secure entity. It is determined, by a secure interface control of the host server, whether the host server is in an auxiliary-secure (AS) debug mode for testing an AS entity. Based on determining that the host server is in the AS debug mode, a secure guest entity state is loaded from a state descriptor for the secure entity into an AS entity state in hardware to test, upon dispatch of the secure entity, accesses to pages in a memory that are registered as secure and as belonging to the AS entity.

Testing storage protection hardware in a secure virtual machine environment

An example computer-implemented method includes presenting, by a hardware control of a computing system, an exception to an untrusted entity when the untrusted entity accesses a secure page stored in a memory of the computing system, the exception preventing the untrusted entity from accessing the secure page. The method further includes, in response to the exception, issuing, by the untrusted entity, an export call routine. The method further includes executing, by a secure interface control of the computing system, the export call routine.

Program interruptions for page importing/exporting

Secure processing within a computing environment is provided by incrementally decrypting a secure operating system image, including receiving, for a page of the secure operating system image, a page address and a tweak value used during encryption of the page. Processing determines that the tweak value has not previously been used during decryption of another page of the secure operating system image, and decrypts memory page content at the page address using an image encryption key and the tweak value to facilitate obtaining a decrypted secure operating system image. Further, integrity of the secure operating system image is verified, and based on verifying integrity of the secure operating system image, execution of the decrypted secure operating system image is started.

Incremental decryption and integrity verification of a secure operating system image

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Rhinebeck, NY, United States of America

Lisa Cranton Heller