On 2023-07-21 at 14:26:11 +0800, Yan Zhao wrote: > On Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 04:44:44PM -0700, Sean Christopherson wrote: > > May I know why KVM now needs to register to callback .change_pte()? I can see the original purpose is to "setting a pte in the shadow page table directly, instead of flushing the shadow page table entry and then getting vmexit to set it"[1]. IIUC, KVM is expected to directly make the new pte present for new pages in this callback, like for COW. > As also commented in kvm_mmu_notifier_change_pte(), .change_pte() must be > surrounded by .invalidate_range_{start,end}(). > > While kvm_mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_start() has called kvm_unmap_gfn_range() > to zap all leaf SPTEs, and page fault path will not install new SPTEs > successfully before kvm_mmu_notifier_invalidate_range_end(), > kvm_set_spte_gfn() should not be able to find any shadow present leaf entries to > update PFN. I also failed to figure out how the kvm_set_spte_gfn() could pass several !is_shadow_present_pte(iter.old_spte) check then write the new pte. [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/200909222039.n8MKd4TL002696@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/ Thanks, Yilun > > Or could we just delete completely > "kvm_handle_hva_range(mn, address, address + 1, pte, kvm_set_spte_gfn);" > from kvm_mmu_notifier_change_pte() ?