Re: [PATCH 1/2] x86/VPMU: Disable VPMU when NMI watchdog is on

[Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>]

On 01/28/2015 04:49 PM, Andrew Cooper wrote:
> On 28/01/2015 19:56, Boris Ostrovsky wrote:
>> NMI watchdog sets APIC_LVTPC register to generate an NMI when PMU counter
>> overflow occurs. This may be overwritten by VPMU code later, effectively
>> turning off the watchdog.
>>
>> We should disable VPMU when NMI watchdog is running.
>>
>> Signed-off-by: Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovsky@oracle.com>
>
> I completely agree with the aim, but this patch is clunky and you have
> missed the case where neither 'watchdog' nor 'vpmu' is specified on the
> command line, but the booleans have been tweaked (which is the XenServer
> way of choosing defaults while keeping the length of the command line down).

You mean binary patching? Or does XenServer change those flags before 
compilation? Yes, I haven't thought about this.

>
> A more simple approach, which doesn't involve exposing opt_vpmu_enabled
> or changing any nmi code, would be to have a check in vpmu_initialise()
> which checks for opt_watchdog and opt_vpmu_enabled and bail.

Right, I can do that (in light of what you said above).

I want to have a warning during boot so that users know that even though 
they specified certain boot parameters these parameters are ignored. If 
we were to print this warning in vpmu_initialise() then it would not be 
displayed until first HVM guest is started.

OTOH, when the full series is applied vpmu initialization will be done 
in initcall, which is where we can warn.

>
> Looking at the code in tree, it seems odd opt_vpmu_enabled is passed to
> the sub initialise functions to be acted upon.  Is this something which
> is cleaned up or changed in your series?  If not, it perhaps should be.

These flags are indeed removed in the series.

> Also, under what conditions would you expect this initialise function to
> be called on a vcpu, and to find its vpmu already active?

You mean why it has
	if ( vpmu_is_set(vpmu, VPMU_CONTEXT_ALLOCATED) )
	        vpmu_destroy(v);
	vpmu_clear(vpmu);
	vpmu->context = NULL;
at the top?

I am not sure why it's there. Migration or hotplug? Probably not since 
this is called via vcpu_initialise() and that is done only once.

I apparently kept this in my series as well, btw.

-boris