Re: [PATCH 0/7] Consolidate vcpu ioctl locking

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

 



On 05/13/2010 10:49 PM, Alexander Graf wrote:

Am 13.05.2010 um 14:29 schrieb Avi Kivity <avi@xxxxxxxxxx>:

On 05/13/2010 03:18 PM, Alexander Graf wrote:

[PATCH 0/7] Consolidate vcpu ioctl locking

In general, all vcpu ioctls need to take the vcpu mutex, but each one does it
(or not) individually.  This is cumbersome and error prone.

This patchset moves all locking to a central place. This is complicated by the fact that ppc's KVM_INTERRUPT and s390's KVM_S390_INTERRUPT break
the convention and need to run unlocked.

Why is the x86 non-kernel-pic path different?


Userspace issues the ioctl from a vcpu thread.

It has to, btw, since whether an interrupt can be injected or not depends on vcpu-synchronous registers: eflags.if and tpr/cr8.

On ppc we don't have a tpr, but eflags.if is basically the same as msr.ee.

The major difference apparently is that on ppc we KVM_INTERRUPT pulls the interrupt line. On vcpu_run we then check whether msr.ee is set and if so, trigger the interrupt.

I wonder why we don't do the same for x86. The current limitation on userspace checking eflags and the tpr seems cumbersome.

On x86 eflags.if is freely changeable by the guest, so if we want to queue an interrupt we have to IPI the vcpu to force it out of guest mode, so we can inspect eflags. This means the vcpu thread has to be interrupted one way or another.

The tpr (really ppr) is even more problematic as it is maintained in userspace, not in the kernel (for non-kernel-irqchip). It could in theory be inspected by another thread, but we wouldn't gain anything by it due to the requirement to IPI.

void kvmppc_book3s_queue_irqprio(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, unsigned int vec)
{
    vcpu->stat.queue_intr++;

    set_bit(kvmppc_book3s_vec2irqprio(vec),
&vcpu->arch.pending_exceptions);
#ifdef EXIT_DEBUG
    printk(KERN_INFO "Queueing interrupt %x\n", vec);
#endif
}

Isn't this missing an IPI if the vcpu is in guest mode?


--
Do not meddle in the internals of kernels, for they are subtle and quick to panic.

--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe kvm-ia64" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html

[Index of Archives]     [Linux KVM Devel]     [Linux Virtualization]     [Big List of Linux Books]     [Linux SCSI]     [Yosemite Forum]

  Powered by Linux