Re: [PATCH RFC 04/15] KVM: Implement ring-based dirty memory tracking

Sean Christopherson
2019-12-02T20:10:41Z

On Fri, Nov 29, 2019 at 04:34:54PM -0500, Peter Xu wrote:
> This patch is heavily based on previous work from Lei Cao
> <lei.cao@stratus.com> and Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>. [1]
>
> KVM currently uses large bitmaps to track dirty memory. These bitmaps
> are copied to userspace when userspace queries KVM for its dirty page
> information. The use of bitmaps is mostly sufficient for live
> migration, as large parts of memory are be dirtied from one log-dirty
> pass to another. However, in a checkpointing system, the number of
> dirty pages is small and in fact it is often bounded---the VM is
> paused when it has dirtied a pre-defined number of pages. Traversing a
> large, sparsely populated bitmap to find set bits is time-consuming,
> as is copying the bitmap to user-space.
>
> A similar issue will be there for live migration when the guest memory
> is huge while the page dirty procedure is trivial. In that case for
> each dirty sync we need to pull the whole dirty bitmap to userspace
> and analyse every bit even if it's mostly zeros.
>
> The preferred data structure for above scenarios is a dense list of
> guest frame numbers (GFN). This patch series stores the dirty list in
> kernel memory that can be memory mapped into userspace to allow speedy
> harvesting.
>
> We defined two new data structures:
>
> struct kvm_dirty_ring;
> struct kvm_dirty_ring_indexes;
>
> Firstly, kvm_dirty_ring is defined to represent a ring of dirty
> pages. When dirty tracking is enabled, we can push dirty gfn onto the
> ring.
>
> Secondly, kvm_dirty_ring_indexes is defined to represent the
> user/kernel interface of each ring. Currently it contains two
> indexes: (1) avail_index represents where we should push our next
> PFN (written by kernel), while (2) fetch_index represents where the
> userspace should fetch the next dirty PFN (written by userspace).
>
> One complete ring is composed by one kvm_dirty_ring plus its
> corresponding kvm_dirty_ring_indexes.
>
> Currently, we have N+1 rings for each VM of N vcpus:
>
> - for each vcpu, we have 1 per-vcpu dirty ring,
> - for each vm, we have 1 per-vm dirty ring

Why? I assume the purpose of per-vcpu rings is to avoid contention between
threads, but the motiviation needs to be explicitly stated. And why is a
per-vm fallback ring needed?

If my assumption is correct, have other approaches been tried/profiled?
E.g. using cmpxchg to reserve N number of entries in a shared ring. IMO,
adding kvm_get_running_vcpu() is a hack that is just asking for future
abuse and the vcpu/vm/as_id interactions in mark_page_dirty_in_ring()
look extremely fragile. I also dislike having two different mechanisms
for accessing the ring (lock for per-vm, something else for per-vcpu).

> Please refer to the documentation update in this patch for more
> details.
>
> Note that this patch implements the core logic of dirty ring buffer.
> It's still disabled for all archs for now. Also, we'll address some
> of the other issues in follow up patches before it's firstly enabled
> on x86.
>
> [1] https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10471409/
>
> Signed-off-by: Lei Cao <lei.cao@stratus.com>
> Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
> Signed-off-by: Peter Xu <peterx@redhat.com>
> ---

...

> diff --git a/virt/kvm/dirty_ring.c b/virt/kvm/dirty_ring.c
> new file mode 100644
> index 000000000000..9264891f3c32
> --- /dev/null
> +++ b/virt/kvm/dirty_ring.c
> @@ -0,0 +1,156 @@
> +#include <linux/kvm_host.h>
> +#include <linux/kvm.h>
> +#include <linux/vmalloc.h>
> +#include <linux/kvm_dirty_ring.h>
> +
> +u32 kvm_dirty_ring_get_rsvd_entries(void)
> +{
> + return KVM_DIRTY_RING_RSVD_ENTRIES + kvm_cpu_dirty_log_size();
> +}
> +
> +int kvm_dirty_ring_alloc(struct kvm *kvm, struct kvm_dirty_ring *ring)
> +{
> + u32 size = kvm->dirty_ring_size;

Just pass in @size, that way you don't need @kvm. And the callers will be
less ugly, e.g. the initial allocation won't need to speculatively set
kvm->dirty_ring_size.

> +
> + ring->dirty_gfns = vmalloc(size);
> + if (!ring->dirty_gfns)
> + return -ENOMEM;
> + memset(ring->dirty_gfns, 0, size);
> +
> + ring->size = size / sizeof(struct kvm_dirty_gfn);
> + ring->soft_limit =
> + (kvm->dirty_ring_size / sizeof(struct kvm_dirty_gfn)) -

And passing @size avoids issues like this where a local var is ignored.

> + kvm_dirty_ring_get_rsvd_entries();
> + ring->dirty_index = 0;
> + ring->reset_index = 0;
> + spin_lock_init(&ring->lock);
> +
> + return 0;
> +}
> +

...

> +void kvm_dirty_ring_free(struct kvm_dirty_ring *ring)
> +{
> + if (ring->dirty_gfns) {

Why condition freeing the dirty ring on kvm->dirty_ring_size, this
obviously protects itself. Not to mention vfree() also plays nice with a
NULL input.

> + vfree(ring->dirty_gfns);
> + ring->dirty_gfns = NULL;
> + }
> +}
> diff --git a/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c b/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
> index 681452d288cd..8642c977629b 100644
> --- a/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
> +++ b/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
> @@ -64,6 +64,8 @@
> #define CREATE_TRACE_POINTS
> #include <trace/events/kvm.h>
>
> +#include <linux/kvm_dirty_ring.h>
> +
> /* Worst case buffer size needed for holding an integer. */
> #define ITOA_MAX_LEN 12
>
> @@ -149,6 +151,10 @@ static void mark_page_dirty_in_slot(struct kvm *kvm,
> struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu,
> struct kvm_memory_slot *memslot,
> gfn_t gfn);
> +static void mark_page_dirty_in_ring(struct kvm *kvm,
> + struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu,
> + struct kvm_memory_slot *slot,
> + gfn_t gfn);
>
> __visible bool kvm_rebooting;
> EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(kvm_rebooting);
> @@ -359,11 +365,22 @@ int kvm_vcpu_init(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, struct kvm *kvm, unsigned id)
> vcpu->preempted = false;
> vcpu->ready = false;
>
> + if (kvm->dirty_ring_size) {
> + r = kvm_dirty_ring_alloc(vcpu->kvm, &vcpu->dirty_ring);
> + if (r) {
> + kvm->dirty_ring_size = 0;
> + goto fail_free_run;

This looks wrong, kvm->dirty_ring_size is used to free allocations, i.e.
previous allocations will leak if a vcpu allocation fails.

> + }
> + }
> +
> r = kvm_arch_vcpu_init(vcpu);
> if (r < 0)
> - goto fail_free_run;
> + goto fail_free_ring;
> return 0;
>
> +fail_free_ring:
> + if (kvm->dirty_ring_size)
> + kvm_dirty_ring_free(&vcpu->dirty_ring);
> fail_free_run:
> free_page((unsigned long)vcpu->run);
> fail:
> @@ -381,6 +398,8 @@ void kvm_vcpu_uninit(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu)
> put_pid(rcu_dereference_protected(vcpu->pid, 1));
> kvm_arch_vcpu_uninit(vcpu);
> free_page((unsigned long)vcpu->run);
> + if (vcpu->kvm->dirty_ring_size)
> + kvm_dirty_ring_free(&vcpu->dirty_ring);
> }
> EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(kvm_vcpu_uninit);
>
> @@ -690,6 +709,7 @@ static struct kvm *kvm_create_vm(unsigned long type)
> struct kvm *kvm = kvm_arch_alloc_vm();
> int r = -ENOMEM;
> int i;
> + struct page *page;
>
> if (!kvm)
> return ERR_PTR(-ENOMEM);
> @@ -705,6 +725,14 @@ static struct kvm *kvm_create_vm(unsigned long type)
>
> BUILD_BUG_ON(KVM_MEM_SLOTS_NUM > SHRT_MAX);
>
> + page = alloc_page(GFP_KERNEL | __GFP_ZERO);
> + if (!page) {
> + r = -ENOMEM;
> + goto out_err_alloc_page;
> + }
> + kvm->vm_run = page_address(page);
> + BUILD_BUG_ON(sizeof(struct kvm_vm_run) > PAGE_SIZE);
> +
> if (init_srcu_struct(&kvm->srcu))
> goto out_err_no_srcu;
> if (init_srcu_struct(&kvm->irq_srcu))
> @@ -775,6 +803,9 @@ static struct kvm *kvm_create_vm(unsigned long type)
> out_err_no_irq_srcu:
> cleanup_srcu_struct(&kvm->srcu);
> out_err_no_srcu:
> + free_page((unsigned long)page);
> + kvm->vm_run = NULL;

No need to nullify vm_run.

> +out_err_alloc_page:
> kvm_arch_free_vm(kvm);
> mmdrop(current->mm);
> return ERR_PTR(r);
> @@ -800,6 +831,15 @@ static void kvm_destroy_vm(struct kvm *kvm)
> int i;
> struct mm_struct *mm = kvm->mm;
>
> + if (kvm->dirty_ring_size) {
> + kvm_dirty_ring_free(&kvm->vm_dirty_ring);
> + }

Unnecessary parantheses.

> +
> + if (kvm->vm_run) {
> + free_page((unsigned long)kvm->vm_run);
> + kvm->vm_run = NULL;
> + }
> +
> kvm_uevent_notify_change(KVM_EVENT_DESTROY_VM, kvm);
> kvm_destroy_vm_debugfs(kvm);
> kvm_arch_sync_events(kvm);
> @@ -2301,7 +2341,7 @@ static void mark_page_dirty_in_slot(struct kvm *kvm,
> {
> if (memslot && memslot->dirty_bitmap) {
> unsigned long rel_gfn = gfn - memslot->base_gfn;
> -
> + mark_page_dirty_in_ring(kvm, vcpu, memslot, gfn);
> set_bit_le(rel_gfn, memslot->dirty_bitmap);
> }
> }
> @@ -2649,6 +2689,13 @@ void kvm_vcpu_on_spin(struct kvm_vcpu *me, bool yield_to_kernel_mode)
> }
> EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL(kvm_vcpu_on_spin);