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

Ackerley Tng
2025-08-25T23:08:21Z

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?

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...]
>