Re: [PATCH 0/9] S390x KVM support

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

 




On 22.10.2009, at 12:03, Avi Kivity wrote:

On 10/22/2009 11:55 AM, Alexander Graf wrote:

On 22.10.2009, at 11:53, Avi Kivity wrote:

On 10/22/2009 11:11 AM, Alexander Graf wrote:
Doesn't this break backward compatibility by changing the structure?

Best to put it after the union (and as a copy, so userspace that expects the previous location still works). If you're reading it from the kernel, also need a way to tell the kernel which copy to read from.

Also advertise with a KVM_CAP.


I don't think we need to go through the hassle here. There is effectively no user of that code for now and the ABI is considered unstable.

At the very least we need a KVM_CAP so qemu knows to fail on older kernels.

Hm. Oh well :-). It can't hurt to have yet another CAP, right?

I'd also appreciate an explanation of what this is all about.

Explanation in the code or explanation in an email reply?


email. I assume s390 hackers would understand why the psw needs to be exposed to qemu on every exit. This is mostly for my personal interest.

PSW = (eflags << 32) | pc;

:-)

Before that patch it was only synced with the "vmcb" on special userspace handled intercepts, now it's synced on every exit to userspace.

Right, but why? x86 qemu doesn't care about either pc or eflags (with in-kernel irqchip, which s390 essentially is).

The old code would only sync the psw for us on "intercepts that the kernel knows require userspace interaction". We'd "x /i $pc" somewhere along the way and would get an old psw, but GET_REGS would give us recent register states, not including the psw. That's a total nightmare.

To solve the psw nightmare there were basically 2 roads possible to take here:

1) Sync the PSW in the GET_REGS ioctl
2) Sync the PSW in kvm_run on all exits to userspace

Otherwise we can't debug guests.

The same goes for setting the PSW. Setting the PSW was only implemented when kvm_run->exit_reason == "the kernel thinks userspace needs to do something". So If you wanted to change the pc along the way, you couldn't.

Furthermore, there was a nasty bug in this whole optimization that lead me to think it's better to just get rid of the whole "kernel tries to be clever" implementation and just sync the psw at all times. Most exits to userspace are of the "userspace needs to do something" type anyways, so we're not really losing anything here. Implementing 2) was just really easy.

So I guess Carsten thought the same way and improved my original patch.


I hope that clarifies things.

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

[Index of Archives]     [KVM ARM]     [KVM ia64]     [KVM ppc]     [Virtualization Tools]     [Spice Development]     [Libvirt]     [Libvirt Users]     [Linux USB Devel]     [Linux Audio Users]     [Yosemite Questions]     [Linux Kernel]     [Linux SCSI]     [XFree86]
  Powered by Linux