Re: [PATCH RFC v1 1/5] KVM: guest_memfd: Remove preparation tracking

Michael Roth
2025-09-16T23:34:00Z

On Mon, Aug 25, 2025 at 04:08:19PM -0700, Ackerley Tng wrote:
> Michael Roth <michael.roth@amd.com> writes:
>
> > guest_memfd currently uses the folio uptodate flag to track:
> >
> > 1) whether or not a page had been cleared before initial usage
> > 2) whether or not the architecture hooks have been issued to put the
> > page in a private state as defined by the architecture
> >
> > In practice, 2) is only actually being tracked for SEV-SNP VMs, and
> > there do not seem to be any plans/reasons that would suggest this will
> > change in the future, so this additional tracking/complexity is not
> > really providing any general benefit to guest_memfd users. Future plans
> > around in-place conversion and hugepage support, where the per-folio
> > uptodate flag is planned to be used purely to track the initial clearing
> > of folios, whereas conversion operations could trigger multiple
> > transitions between 'prepared' and 'unprepared' and thus need separate
> > tracking, will make the burden of tracking this information within
> > guest_memfd even more complex, since preparation generally happens
> > during fault time, on the "read-side" of any global locks that might
> > protect state tracked by guest_memfd, and so may require more complex
> > locking schemes to allow for concurrent handling of page faults for
> > multiple vCPUs where the "preparedness" state tracked by guest_memfd
> > might need to be updated as part of handling the fault.
> >
> > Instead of keeping this current/future complexity within guest_memfd for
> > what is essentially just SEV-SNP, just drop the tracking for 2) and have
> > the arch-specific preparation hooks get triggered unconditionally on
> > every fault so the arch-specific hooks can check the preparation state
> > directly and decide whether or not a folio still needs additional
> > preparation. In the case of SEV-SNP, the preparation state is already
> > checked again via the preparation hooks to avoid double-preparation, so
> > nothing extra needs to be done to update the handling of things there.
> >
> > Signed-off-by: Michael Roth <michael.roth@amd.com>
> > ---
> > virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c | 47 ++++++++++++++----------------------------
> > 1 file changed, 15 insertions(+), 32 deletions(-)
> >
> > diff --git a/virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c b/virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c
> > index 35f94a288e52..cc93c502b5d8 100644
> > --- a/virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c
> > +++ b/virt/kvm/guest_memfd.c
> > @@ -421,11 +421,6 @@ static int __kvm_gmem_prepare_folio(struct kvm *kvm, struct kvm_memory_slot *slo
> > return 0;
> > }
> >
> > -static inline void kvm_gmem_mark_prepared(struct folio *folio)
> > -{
> > - folio_mark_uptodate(folio);
> > -}
> > -
> > /*
> > * Process @folio, which contains @gfn, so that the guest can use it.
> > * The folio must be locked and the gfn must be contained in @slot.
> > @@ -435,13 +430,7 @@ static inline void kvm_gmem_mark_prepared(struct folio *folio)
> > static int kvm_gmem_prepare_folio(struct kvm *kvm, struct kvm_memory_slot *slot,
> > gfn_t gfn, struct folio *folio)
> > {
> > - unsigned long nr_pages, i;
> > pgoff_t index;
> > - int r;
> > -
> > - nr_pages = folio_nr_pages(folio);
> > - for (i = 0; i < nr_pages; i++)
> > - clear_highpage(folio_page(folio, i));
> >
> > /*
> > * Preparing huge folios should always be safe, since it should
> > @@ -459,11 +448,8 @@ static int kvm_gmem_prepare_folio(struct kvm *kvm, struct kvm_memory_slot *slot,
>
> While working on HugeTLB support for guest_memfd, I added a test that
> tries to map a non-huge-page-aligned gmem.pgoff to a huge-page aligned
> gfn.
>
> I understand that config would destroy the performance advantages of
> huge pages, but I think the test is necessary since Yan brought up the
> use case here [1].
>
> The conclusion in that thread, I believe, was to allow binding of
> unaligned GFNs to offsets, but disallow large pages in that case. The
> next series for guest_memfd HugeTLB support will include a fix similar
> to this [2].
>
> While testing, I hit this WARN_ON with a non-huge-page-aligned
> gmem.pgoff.
>
> > WARN_ON(!IS_ALIGNED(slot->gmem.pgoff, 1 << folio_order(folio)));
>
> Do you all think this WARN_ON can be removed?

I think so.. I actually ended up dropping this WARN_ON() for a similar
reason:

https://github.com/AMDESE/linux/commit/c654cd144ad0d823f4db8793ebf9b43a3e8a7c48

but in that case it was to deal with memslots where most of the GPA
ranges are huge-page aligned to the gmemfd, and it's just that the start/end
GPA ranges have been split up and associated with other memslots. In that case
I still try to allow hugepages but force order 0 in kvm_gmem_get_pfn()
for the start/end ranges.

I haven't really considered the case where entire GPA range is misaligned
with gmemfd hugepage offsets but the proposed handling seems reasonable
to me... I need to take a closer look at whether the above-mentioned
logic is at odds with what is/will be implemented in
kvm_alloc_memslot_metadata() however as that seems a bit more restrictive.

Thanks,

Mike

>
> Also, do you think kvm_gmem_prepare_folio()s interface should perhaps be
> changed to take pfn, gfn, nr_pages (PAGE_SIZE pages) and level?
>
> I think taking a folio is kind of awkward since we're not really setting
> up the folio, we're setting up something mapping-related for the
> folio. Also, kvm_gmem_invalidate() doesn't take folios, which is more
> aligned with invalidating mappings rather than something folio-related.
>
> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/aA7UXI0NB7oQQrL2@yzhao56-desk.sh.intel.com/
> [2] https://github.com/googleprodkernel/linux-cc/commit/371ed9281e0c9ba41cfdc20b48a6c5566f61a7df
>
> > index = gfn - slot->base_gfn + slot->gmem.pgoff;
> > index = ALIGN_DOWN(index, 1 << folio_order(folio));
> > - r = __kvm_gmem_prepare_folio(kvm, slot, index, folio);
> > - if (!r)
> > - kvm_gmem_mark_prepared(folio);
> >
> > - return r;
> > + return __kvm_gmem_prepare_folio(kvm, slot, index, folio);
> > }
> >
> >
> > [...snip...]
> >
>