Thread (5 messages) 5 messages, 3 authors, 2016-12-01

Unable to use perf in VM

From: Wei Huang <hidden>
Date: 2016-11-30 19:17:55
Also in: kvmarm


On 11/30/2016 07:37 AM, Marc Zyngier wrote:
On 30/11/16 11:48, Marc Zyngier wrote:
quoted
+ Shannon

On 29/11/16 22:04, Itaru Kitayama wrote:
quoted
Hi,

In a VM (virsh controlled, KVM acceleration enabled) on a recent
kvmarm kernel host, I find I am unable to use perf to obtain
performance statistics for a complex task like kernel build.
(I've verified this is seen with a Fedora 25 VM and host combination
as well)
APM folks CC'ed think this might be caused by a bug in the core PMU 
framework code, thus I'd like to have experts opinion on this issue.

[root at localhost linux]# perf stat -B make
   CHK     include/config/kernel.release
[  119.617684] git[1144]: undefined instruction: pc=fffffc000808ff30
[  119.623040] Code: 51000442 92401042 d51b9ca2 d5033fdf (d53b9d40)
[  119.627607] Internal error: undefined instruction: 0 [#1] SMP
[...]

In a VM running mainline hosted on an AMD Seattle box:

 Performance counter stats for 'make':

    1526089.499304      task-clock:u (msec)       #    0.932 CPUs utilized          
                 0      context-switches:u        #    0.000 K/sec                  
                 0      cpu-migrations:u          #    0.000 K/sec                  
          29527793      page-faults:u             #    0.019 M/sec                  
     2913174122673      cycles:u                  #    1.909 GHz                    
     2365040892322      instructions:u            #    0.81  insn per cycle         
   <not supported>      branches:u                                                  
       32049215378      branch-misses:u           #    0.00% of all branches        

    1637.531444837 seconds time elapsed

Running the same host kernel on a Mustang system, the guest explodes
in the way you reported. The failing instruction always seems to be
an access to pmxevcntr_el0 (I've seen both reads and writes).

Funnily enough, it dies if you try any HW event other than cycles
("perf stat -e cycles ls" works, and "perf stat -e instructions ls"
explodes). Which would tend to indicate that we're screwing up
the counter selection, but I have no proof of that (specially that
the Seattle guest is working just as expected).
It turns out that we *don't* inject an undef. It seems to be generated
locally at EL1.

Still digging.
Just FYI: I saw it on Mustang before. My initial thought was HW related,
but without proof. I am interested to see your findings...
	M.
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