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From: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@nvidia.com>
To: Alex Williamson <alex@shazbot.org>, kvm <kvm@vger.kernel.org>
Cc: Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@nvidia.com>,
	linux-kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ziepe.ca>, Kevin Tian <kevin.tian@intel.com>,
	Yi Liu <yi.l.liu@intel.com>, David Matlack <dmatlack@google.com>
Subject: [PATCH 0/4] vfio: Fix cdev second-open and harden selftests
Date: Tue,  1 Sep 2026 15:53:53 -0600	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260901215358.2421359-1-alex.williamson@nvidia.com> (raw)

In porting some testing infrastructure to a different system I found
the igb selftest failing in mix_and_match and generating a cascade
failure through the remaining tests.  The difference in the new system
is the firmware error handling.  When the igb device gets wedged due
to bad DMA in mix_and_match, we need to FLR the device.  The igb holds
transaction pending asserted for the full duration of
pci_wait_for_pending().  Meanwhile, firmware based error handling is
triggering SMIs and stealing time, such that the 700ms total delay
in pci_wait_for_pending() turns into several seconds.  With 10 cases
in mix_and_match generating bad DMAs, the transaction pending delays
alone push us close to the 30s per-test timeout.  The worst case I
observed for the total test was ~45s.  Increasing the mix_and_match
timeout to 90s provides plenty of headroom to get a passing test and
avoid the cascade failure.

When the process is killed via timeout, the release occurs through a
scheduled fput(), which is also delayed by the SMI storm.  Each
subsequent test then sees a non-zero open_count (for the group open
in legacy mode or on the iommufd bind in the cdev mode), resulting in
the cascade failure.  Group mode already uses -EBUSY when the group
fd open count is elevated, which allows selftests to interpret the
failure as potentially transient and implement a bounded retry.  The
cdev path instead returns -EINVAL for this case.  -EBUSY seems
justified here and allows userspace to have compatible retry flows
for group open and cdev bind operations.

A local sashiko review then found two existing issues.  First, in
analyzing the exit flow from the iommufd bind, we can see that the
vf_token and kvm pointers are clobbered by the second process before
the open count test.  The open_count test in vfio_df_open() is only
for the cdev path (!df->group) and is called under the dev_set lock,
so we really only need to relocate the test to
vfio_df_ioctl_bind_iommufd() prior to vf_token/kvm manipulation.

The second existing issue is that when executed via the kselftest
runner, all tests have a 45s timeout, which is the cumulative time
across each sub-test of the execution.  The pci_driver test already
fails this with ioatdma, nv_falcon, and obviously with physical igb.
Running in parallel across both ports of an igb on the system prone
to SMI overhead, the worst case I saw was 450s.  Therefore, we not
only need to extend the mix_and_match timeout to 90s to handle the
extra transaction pending delay, we need to extend the default
timeout to allow the full pci-driver test to complete when executed
via the runner.  600s is picked here as a "sufficient" margin.

Please review and comment.  Thanks,

Alex

Alex Williamson (4):
  vfio: Reject a second cdev open before mutating shared device state
  selftests/vfio: Wait out transient -EBUSY on open/bind
  selftests/vfio: Extend mix_and_match timeout to 90s
  selftests/vfio: Extend timeout for runner executions

 drivers/vfio/device_cdev.c                    | 12 ++++++++
 drivers/vfio/vfio_main.c                      |  7 -----
 tools/testing/selftests/vfio/.gitignore       |  1 +
 .../selftests/vfio/lib/vfio_pci_device.c      | 29 +++++++++++++++++--
 tools/testing/selftests/vfio/settings         |  5 ++++
 .../selftests/vfio/vfio_pci_driver_test.c     |  2 +-
 6 files changed, 46 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/vfio/settings


base-commit: cee9395acd8043be0644b25c34bfa86623f2b935
-- 
2.53.0

             reply	other threads:[~2026-09-01 21:54 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 5+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2026-09-01 21:53 Alex Williamson [this message]
2026-09-01 21:53 ` [PATCH 1/4] vfio: Reject a second cdev open before mutating shared device state Alex Williamson
2026-09-01 21:53 ` [PATCH 2/4] selftests/vfio: Wait out transient -EBUSY on open/bind Alex Williamson
2026-09-01 21:53 ` [PATCH 3/4] selftests/vfio: Extend mix_and_match timeout to 90s Alex Williamson
2026-09-01 21:53 ` [PATCH 4/4] selftests/vfio: Extend timeout for runner executions Alex Williamson

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