Re: [PATCHv2 2/9] KVM: Expose a version 2 architectural PMU to a guests

[Peter Zijlstra <a.p.zijlstra@chello.nl>]

On Mon, 2011-11-07 at 16:46 +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
> On 11/07/2011 04:34 PM, Peter Zijlstra wrote:
> > On Thu, 2011-11-03 at 14:33 +0200, Gleb Natapov wrote:
> > > +static void kvm_perf_overflow_intr(struct perf_event *perf_event,
> > > +               struct perf_sample_data *data, struct pt_regs *regs)
> > > +{
> > > +       struct kvm_pmc *pmc = perf_event->overflow_handler_context;
> > > +       struct kvm_pmu *pmu = &pmc->vcpu->arch.pmu;
> > > +       if (!test_and_set_bit(pmc->idx, (unsigned long *)&pmu->reprogram_pmi)) {
> > > +               kvm_perf_overflow(perf_event, data, regs);
> > > +               kvm_make_request(KVM_REQ_PMU, pmc->vcpu);
> > > +               /*
> > > +                * Inject PMI. If vcpu was in a guest mode during NMI PMI
> > > +                * can be ejected on a guest mode re-entry. Otherwise we can't
> > > +                * be sure that vcpu is not halted, so we should kick it, but
> > > +                * this is impossible from NMI context. Do it from irq work
> > > +                * instead.
> > > +                */
> > > +               if (!kvm_is_in_guest())
> > > +                       irq_work_queue(&pmc->vcpu->arch.pmu.irq_work);
> > > +               else
> > > +                       kvm_make_request(KVM_REQ_PMI, pmc->vcpu);
> > > +       }
> > > +} 
> >
> > I'm not sure I get this, since the counters are vcpu task bound and only
> > count while the guest is running as per (144d31e6f19) how can we get an
> > NMI outside of guest context with the vcpu not halted?
> 
> PMI skew.  Do we know how bad it can get?

You're talking about the PMI getting asserted before leaving guest mode
but not getting ran until after we left guest mode?

But in that case we know the guest is stopped, right? So we can simply
set that REQ_PMI bit and have guest entry sort things, no?