Re: [PATCH v2] KVM: VMX: Update instruction length on intercepted BP

Gleb Natapov
2010-02-17T13:12:43Z

On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 12:23:39PM +0100, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> Gleb Natapov wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 17, 2010 at 01:13:29PM +0200, Avi Kivity wrote:
> >> On 02/17/2010 12:43 PM, Gleb Natapov wrote:
> >>>> And, again: This is an _existing_ user space ABI. We could only provide
> >>>> an alternative, but we have to maintain what is there at least for some
> >>>> longer grace period.
> >>>>
> >>> But it was always broken for SVM and was broken for VMX for a year and
> >>> nobody noticed, so may be instead of reintroducing old interface we should
> >>> do it right this time?
> >> We need to fix the existing interface first, and then think long and
> >> hard if we want yet another interface, since we're likely to screw
> >> it up as well.
> >>
> >> The more interfaces we introduce, the harder maintenance becomes.
> >>
> > We are in a sad state if we cannot improve interface. The current one
> > outsource part of CPU functionality into userspace. This should be a big
> > no-no.
>
> I still disagree on this. Moving the decision logic to user space
> prevented to re-implement a gdbstub in kernel space. I oversaw that
> re-injecting #BP over older SVM was broken, but it is now fixed for all
> vendors. So moving it back to kernel has actually no long-term reason.
>
There were patches to implement gdbstub in kernel space! And not so long
time ago :) But I want to move only a tiny bit of logic into the kernel space.
And #BP reinjection brokenness is a different issue. It should be fixed
anyway no matter where decision about reinfection happens.

If maintainers think that we should not have improved interface and we
should support reinjection of #DB from userspace then this patch should
be applied. I don't have other objections to it. But I, at least, would
prefer the old interface for #DB reinjection (KVM_GUESTDBG_INJECT_DB)
and not the new one. The old one makes it explicit what we are doing,
the new one allows injection of any event and should be used only during
migration or CPU reset. It would be event good idea to fail setting
events if CPU is running.

--
Gleb.