Thread (24 messages) 24 messages, 7 authors, 2017-08-21

[PATCH RFC 0/2] KVM: use RCU to allow dynamic kvm->vcpus array

From: Marc Zyngier <hidden>
Date: 2017-08-18 14:22:47
Also in: kvm, linux-mips, linux-s390, lkml

On 18/08/17 15:10, Radim Kr?m?? wrote:
2017-08-17 21:17+0200, Alexander Graf:
quoted
On 17.08.17 16:54, Radim Kr?m?? wrote:
quoted
2017-08-17 09:04+0200, Alexander Graf:
quoted
What if we just sent a "vcpu move" request to all vcpus with the new pointer
after it moved? That way the vcpu thread itself would be responsible for the
migration to the new memory region. Only if all vcpus successfully moved,
keep rolling (and allow foreign get_vcpu again).
I'm not sure if I understood this.  You propose to cache kvm->vcpus in
vcpu->vcpus and do an extensions of this,

   int vcpu_create(...) {
     if (resize_needed(kvm->vcpus)) {
       old_vcpus = kvm->vcpus
       kvm->vcpus = make_bigger(kvm->vcpus)
if (kvm->vcpus != old_vcpus) :)
quoted
       kvm_make_all_cpus_request(kvm, KVM_REQ_UPDATE_VCPUS)
IIRC you'd need some manual bookkeeping to ensure that all users have
switched to the new array. Or set the KVM_REQUEST_WAIT flag :).
Absolutely.  I was thinking about synchronous execution, which might
need extra work to expedite halted VCPUs.  Letting the last user free it
is plausible and would need more protection against races.
quoted
quoted
       free(old_vcpus)
     }
     vcpu->vcpus = kvm->vcpus
   }

with added extra locking, (S)RCU, on accesses that do not come from
VCPUs (irqfd and VM ioctl)?
Well, in an ideal world we wouldn't have any users to vcpu structs outside
of the vcpus obviously. Every time we do, we should either reconsider
whether the design is smart and if we think it is, protect them accordingly.
And there would be no linear access to all VCPUs. :)

The main user of kvm->vcpus is kvm_for_each_vcpu(), which is well suited
for a list, so we can change the design of kvm_for_each_vcpu() to use a
list head in struct kvm_vcpu with head/tail in struct kvm.
(The list is trivial to make lockless as we only append.)

This would allow more flexibility with the remaining uses.
quoted
Maybe even hard code separate request mechanisms for the few cases where
it's reasonable?
All non-kvm_for_each_vcpu() seem to need accesss outside of VCPU scope.

We have few awkward accesses that can be handled keeping track of kvm
state and all remaining uses need some kind of "int -> struct kvm_vcpu"
mapping, where the integer is arbitrary.

All users of kvm_get_vcpu_by_id() need a vcpu_id mapping, but hijack
kvm->vcpus for O(1) access if lucky, with fallback to
kvm_for_each_vcpu().  Adding a vcpu_id mapping seems reasonable.

s390 __floating_irq_kick() and x86 kvm_irq_delivery_to_apic() are
keeping a bitmap for kvm->vcpus indices.  They want compact indices,
which cannot be provided by vcpu_id mapping.

I think that MIPS and ARM use the index in kvm->vcpus for userspace
communication, which looks dangerous as userspace shouldn't know the
position.  Not much we can do because of that.
I think (at least for the ARM side) that we could switch whatever use we
have of the index to a vcpu_id. The worse offender (as far as I can
remember) is when injecting an interrupt, and that could be creatively
re-purposed to describe an affinity value in a backward compatible way.

Probably.

	N,
-- 
Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny...
Keyboard shortcuts
hback out one level
jnext message in thread
kprevious message in thread
ldrill in
Escclose help / fold thread tree
?toggle this help