Re: [PATCH v5 01/10] hyperv: Convert Hyper-V status codes to strings

Roman Kisel
2025-02-28T16:40:11Z

On 2/27/2025 4:15 PM, Nuno Das Neves wrote:
> On 2/27/2025 9:02 AM, Roman Kisel wrote:

[...]

> I guess you're implying it's not worth adding such a function for only a
> few places in the code? That is a good point, and a bit of an oversight
> on my part while editing this series. Originally all the hypercall helper
> functions in the driver code (10+ places) used this function as well, but
> I removed those printks_()s as a temporary solution to limit the use of
> printk in the driver code (as opposed to dev_printk() which is preferred).
>
> I didn't think to remove *this* patch as a result of that change!
> I do want to figure out a good way to add that logging back to the hypercall
> helpers, so I do want to try and get some form of this patch in to aid
> debugging hypercalls - it has been very very useful over time.
>

Right, I thought that the function looked more as a bring-up aid rather
than a full fledged solution to some problem.

>> The "Unknown" part would make debugging harder actually when something
>> fails. I presume that the mainstream scenarios all work, and it is the
>> edge cases that might fail, and these are likelier to produce "Unknown".
>>
> That is a very good point. Ideally, we could log "Unknown" along with
> the hex code instead of replacing it.
>
> What do you think about keeping this function, but instead of using it
> directly, introduce a "standard" way for logging hypercall errors which
> can hopefully be used everywhere in the kernel?
> e.g. a simple macro:
> #define hv_hvcall_err(control, status)
> do {
> u64 ___status = (status);
> pr_err("Hypercall: %#x err: %#x : %s", (control) & 0xFFFF, hv_result(___status), hv_result_to_string(___status));
> } while (0)
>
> I feel like this is the best of both worlds, and actually makes it even
> easier to do this logging everywhere it is wanted (for me, that includes
> all the /dev/mshv-related hypercalls).
> We could add strings for the HVCALL_ values too, and/or include __func__
> in the macro to aid in finding the context it was used in.
>

That doesn’t seem to be common in the kernel from what I’ve seen in
dmesg, although there is certainly a lot of appeal in that approach.
However, we will have to remember to update the function each time when
another status code is added not to leave things half-cooked.

Also it is a bit surprising the *kernel* should report that rather than
the VMM from the user mode. E.g. the kernel does not report all errors
on file open, file seek, etc. As I understand, the hv status codes are
later mapped to errno in a lossy manner, and errno is what the user mode
receives?

As long as the hex code is logged, I am fine with the change.

>> Folks who actually debug failed hypercalls rarely have issues with
>> looking up the error code, and printing "Unknown" to the log is worse
>> than a hexadecimal. Like even the people who wrote the code got nothing
>> to say about what is going on.
>>
> Yep, totally agree having the hex code available can be valuable in
> unexpected situations.
>

Appreciate giving my concerns a thorough consideration!

--
Thank you,
Roman