[PATCH] arm64: debug: avoid accessing mdscr_el1 on fault paths where possible

On Fri, May 02 2014 at  4:46:20 pm BST, Will Deacon [off-list ref] wrote:

Since mdscr_el1 is part of the debug register group, it is highly likely
to be trapped by a hypervisor to prevent virtual machines from debugging
(buggering?) each other. Unfortunately, this absolutely destroys our
performance, since we access the register on many of our low-level
fault handling paths to keep track of the various debug state machines.

This patch removes our dependency on mdscr_el1 in the case that debugging
is not being used. More specifically we:

  - Use TIF_SINGLESTEP to indicate that a task is stepping at EL0 and
    avoid disabling step in the MDSCR when we don't need to.
    MDSCR_EL1.SS handling is moved to kernel_entry, when trapping from
    userspace.

  - Ensure debug exceptions are re-enabled on *all* exception entry
    paths, even the debug exception handling path (where we re-enable
    exceptions after invoking the handler). Since we can now rely on
    MDSCR_EL1.SS being cleared by the entry code, exception handlers can
    usually enable debug immediately before enabling interrupts.

  - Remove all debug exception unmasking from ret_to_user and
    el1_preempt, since we will never get here with debug exceptions
    masked.

This results in a slight change to kernel debug behaviour, where we now
step into interrupt handlers and data aborts from EL1 when debugging the
kernel, which is actually a useful thing to do. A side-effect of this is
that it *does* potentially prevent stepping off {break,watch}points when
there is a high-frequency interrupt source (e.g. a timer), so a debugger
would need to use either breakpoints or manually disable interrupts to
get around this issue.

With this patch applied, guest performance is restored under KVM when
debug register accesses are trapped (and we get a measurable performance
increase on the host on Cortex-A57 too).

Cc: Marc Zyngier <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Will Deacon <redacted>

Tried with KVM on Cortex-A57 (and a set of yet to be posted patches to
support debug in a VM), and very pleased with it. This patch makes it
fly! ;-)

Tested-by: Marc Zyngier <redacted>

	M.
-- 
AAAFNRAA