Re: [PATCH v7 3/7] KVM: arm64: Allow userspace to configure a vCPU's virtual offset
From: Marc Zyngier <maz@kernel.org>
Date: 2021-09-06 09:04:29
Also in:
kvm, kvmarm
On Sun, 29 Aug 2021 03:35:30 +0100, Oliver Upton [off-list ref] wrote:
On Mon, Aug 16, 2021 at 12:12:13AM +0000, Oliver Upton wrote:quoted
Allow userspace to access the guest's virtual counter-timer offset through the ONE_REG interface. The value read or written is defined to be an offset from the guest's physical counter-timer. Add some documentation to clarify how a VMM should use this and the existing CNTVCT_EL0. Signed-off-by: Oliver Upton <redacted> Reviewed-by: Andrew Jones <redacted>Hrm... I was mulling on this patch a bit more and had a thought. As previously discussed, the patch implements virtual offsets by broadcasting the same offset to all vCPUs in a guest. I wonder if this may tolerate bad practices from userspace that will break when KVM supports NV. Consider that a nested guest may set CNTVOFF_EL2 to whatever value it wants. Presumably, we will need to patch the handling of CNTVOFF_EL2 to *not* broadcast to all vCPUs to save/restore NV properly. If a maligned VMM only wrote to a single vCPU, banking on this broadcasting implementation, it will fall flat on its face when handling an NV guest. So, should we preemptively move to the new way of the world, wherein userspace accesses to CNTVOFF_EL2 are vCPU-local rather than VM-wide? No strong opinions in either direction, but figured I'd address it since I'll need to respin this series anyway to fix ECV+nVHE.
Thought about this a bit more whilst being away from a computer... It all boils down to what we expose as an abstraction of a machine. If there is no EL2 in the VM, then there shouldn't be any way for the guest to observe different values for the counters as seen from different vcpus. That's what the architecture guarantees for a physical system, and we shouldn't deviate from that. Opening the door for userspace to do anything differently is a recipe for disaster. It actually is an argument in favour of setting the various offsets to a value that keep the two physical and virtual counters in sync, instead of the current behaviour that allows different values to be observed. The above is in contrast with what the architecture allows when EL2 is present. The hypervisor can naturally deal with the offsets as it sees fit, and no offset should have any bearing on it (this later point is of course to be moderated by CNTPOFF on the host). To sum it up, I'd rather keep the CNTVOFF behaviour what it is today for guest that have their highest exception level at EL1. For EL2 guests, the setting will obviously have to become per-CPU. M. -- Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. _______________________________________________ linux-arm-kernel mailing list linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-arm-kernel