physmem: teach cpu_memory_rw_debug() to write to more memory regions

Right now, we only allow for writing to memory regions that allow direct
access using memcpy etc; all other writes are simply ignored. This
implies that debugging guests will not work as expected when writing
to MMIO device regions.

Let's extend cpu_memory_rw_debug() to write to more memory regions,
including MMIO device regions. Reshuffle the condition in
memory_access_is_direct() to make it easier to read and add a comment.

While this change implies that debug access can now also write to MMIO
devices, we now are also permit ELF image loads and similar users of
cpu_memory_rw_debug() to write to MMIO devices; currently we ignore
these writes.

Peter assumes [1] that there's probably a class of guest images, which
will start writing junk (likely zeroes) into device model registers; we
previously would silently ignore any such bogus ELF sections. Likely
these images are of questionable correctness and this can be ignored. If
ever a problem, we could make these cases use address_space_write_rom()
instead, which is left unchanged for now.

This patch is based on previous work by Stefan Zabka.

[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAFEAcA_2CEJKFyjvbwmpt=on=GgMVamQ5hiiVt+zUr6AY3X=Xg@mail.gmail.com/

Resolves: https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/213
Reviewed-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20250210084648.33798-8-david@redhat.com
Signed-off-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 2 insertions, 7 deletions

diff --git a/system/physmem.c b/system/physmem.c
index 8745c10..d3efdf1 100644
--- a/system/physmem.c
+++ b/system/physmem.c
@@ -3680,13 +3680,8 @@ int cpu_memory_rw_debug(CPUState *cpu, vaddr addr,
         if (l > len)
             l = len;
         phys_addr += (addr & ~TARGET_PAGE_MASK);
-        if (is_write) {
-            res = address_space_write_rom(cpu->cpu_ases[asidx].as, phys_addr,
-                                          attrs, buf, l);
-        } else {
-            res = address_space_read(cpu->cpu_ases[asidx].as, phys_addr,
-                                     attrs, buf, l);
-        }
+        res = address_space_rw(cpu->cpu_ases[asidx].as, phys_addr, attrs, buf,
+                               l, is_write);
         if (res != MEMTX_OK) {
             return -1;
         }