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

Ackerley Tng
2025-09-18T06:31:04Z

Michael Roth <michael.roth@amd.com> writes:

> 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:
>

Thanks for confirming!

> 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.
>

Does this help? [1] (from a WIP patch series).

KVM already checks that the guest base address (base_gfn) and the
userspace virtual address (userspace_addr) are aligned relative to each
other for each large page level. If they are not, large pages are
disabled for the entire memory slot.

[1] extends that same check for slot->base_gfn and
slot->gmem.pgoff. Hence, guest_memfd is letting KVM manage the
mapping. guest_memfd reports max_order based on what it knows (folio
size, and folio size is also determined by shareability), and KVM
manages the mapping after taking account lpage_info in addition to
max_order.

[1] https://github.com/googleprodkernel/linux-cc/commit/371ed9281e0c9ba41cfdc20b48a6c5566f61a7df

> 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...]
>> >
>>