Re: Linux in VirtualPC in KVM fails

Avi Kivity
2009-01-09T17:50:24Z

Kevin Wolf wrote:
> Hi,
>
> let's start with the scenario I tried to use: I have two levels of
> virtualization. On the physical hardware I run a Linux with KVM. The KVM
> guest is a Win2k3 VM which runs VirtualPC. In VirtualPC I try to run a
> Linux again (openSUSE 11.1 to be specific, but that shouldn't matter).
>
> The boot menu comes up nicely and so on, but early in the kernel boot it
> crashes:
>
> EIP is at kvm_deferred_mmu_op+0x46/0xbf
> Call Trace:
> [<c0117f79>] kvm_mmu_write+0x59/0x61
> [<c011bad9>] set_pte_vaddr+0x95/0xec
> [<c011b3b2>] __native_set_fixmap+0x1d/0x24
> [<c054ae5b>] test_wp_bit+0x24/0x6c
> [<c054b6b1>] mem_init+0x295/0x2b8
> [<c053a8a3>] start_kernel+0x262/0x31f
>
> Now obviously this is a KVM function where there should be none. The
> problem seems to be that VirtualPC doesn't intercept cpuid and thus the
> VirtualPC guest sees the KVM cpuid values where it better wouldn't.
> Consequently, it turns on the paravirt support for KVM which is exactly
> wrong and leads to the crash on the first hypercall.
>
> The guest has no chance to detect correctly if it's running directly on
> KVM or if there is another virtualization layer which can't emulate
> cpuid. So the fix must involve the mechanism itself. Alex has suggested
> to change the interface to use a KVM-specific MSR instead of cpuid as
> these should be handled by any virtualization software. I'm copying him
> so he can take over for the details, I just want to get the discussion
> started.
>
> So... Comments? Suggestions? Patches? ;-)
>

Gaa. Looks like cpuid is totally broken by first-generation
virtualization products.

We're in a nice compatibility mess. We can't just switch paravirt
detection methods since that will break older guests _and_ older hosts
on non-nested virtualization (which is the common case).

So I suggest:
- add a new cpuid bit, for 'paravirt verification'
- if the new bit is present, the guest verifies that paravirt is truly
enabled by reading an msr (and checking a signature).

Older guests or newer guests running on older hosts will still be
broken, but there's a command line parameter for disabling paravirt on
the guest, and we can add one for the host as well.

--
I have a truly marvellous patch that fixes the bug which this
signature is too narrow to contain.