Re: [qemu-upstream-unstable test] 21375: regressions - FAIL

[Anthony PERARD <anthony.perard@citrix.com>]

On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 03:46:36PM +0000, Anthony PERARD wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 12:06:51PM +0000, Ian Campbell wrote:
> > On Fri, 2013-11-01 at 11:58 +0000, Anthony PERARD wrote:
> > > On Fri, Nov 01, 2013 at 10:43:16AM +0000, Ian Campbell wrote:
> > > > On Fri, 2013-11-01 at 10:38 +0000, xen.org wrote:
> > > > > flight 21375 qemu-upstream-unstable real [real]
> > > > > http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~xensrcts/logs/21375/
> > > > > 
> > > > > Regressions :-(
> > > > > 
> > > > > Tests which did not succeed and are blocking,
> > > > > including tests which could not be run:
> > > > >  test-amd64-i386-qemuu-rhel6hvm-intel  7 redhat-install    fail REGR. vs. 20054
> > > > 
> > > > Anythony, have you made any progress on this? It's been failing for ages
> > > > now...
> > > 
> > > Yes, looks like the bug it trigger during a vesa resolution change. I
> > > have try to use the vgabios blob that we use for qemu-traditionnal and
> > > it works fine. But with the vgabios blob provided by qemu, it does not
> > > work... I'm still not sure of what the bug is, but I'm getting closer to
> > > it.
> > 
> > Yay!
> > 
> > > Also, this happen only on an Intel machine, on an AMD machine,
> > > everything works like a charm.
> > > 
> > > More detail, if anyone want to know:
> > > It's look like syslinux is doing a int 10h call that never return to set
> > > video mode:
> > > Int 0x10, with AX=0x4F02
> > 
> > This looks like it might be handled by SeaBIOS vgasrc/vbe.c:vbe_104f00 ?
> > There seem to be a few changes in upstream seabios since the version
> > referenced in xen.git:Config.mk. Many of them are cleanups/code motion
> > but a few look worth investigating. 
> 
> I've been able to get the things working by applying a patch to vgabios
> that is in xen tree: a0e7ccf6864c196906d58b54cd0996b4dbc1b022
> This patch allow to clear the framebuffer much faster.
> 
> But it those not really help be to understand why the guest freeze. A
> couple more printf might.

I finally managed to have a better understanding of the issue.

So, the vgabios blob provided by QEMU have a routine to clear the video
ram that take few seconds to run. That give enough time to QEMU to try
to refresh is display, and this mean they will be a call to
xc_hvm_track_dirty_vram(). If the function is called while the vgabios
routine is running, then the guest is lost.

The issue appear only with an Intel machine on an HVM guest using EPT.
Having the guest using shadow works fine. So I'm going to investigate
the track_dirty code in Xen.

The vgabios routine is called by syslinux with an Int 0x10, I tryied to
get some debug print after the call, either from the guest serial or
by using the Xen debug ioport, nothing ever appear, and gdbsx only gave
me some weird IP which does not appear to point to any usefull code
(it's all zeros).

-- 
Anthony PERARD