From: Jack Thomson <jackabt.amazon@gmail.com>
To: maz@kernel.org, oupton@kernel.org, pbonzini@redhat.com
Cc: joey.gouly@arm.com, seiden@linux.ibm.com, suzuki.poulose@arm.com,
yuzenghui@huawei.com, catalin.marinas@arm.com, will@kernel.org,
shuah@kernel.org, corbet@lwn.net, vladimir.murzin@arm.com,
linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org, kvmarm@lists.linux.dev,
kvm@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
linux-kselftest@vger.kernel.org, linux-doc@vger.kernel.org,
isaku.yamahata@intel.com, Jack Thomson <jackabt@amazon.com>
Subject: [PATCH v5 0/5] KVM: arm64: Add KVM_PRE_FAULT_MEMORY support
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 2026 17:23:48 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20260612162354.73378-1-jackabt.amazon@gmail.com> (raw)
From: Jack Thomson <jackabt@amazon.com>
Hi,
This series adds arm64 support for KVM_PRE_FAULT_MEMORY, which was added
for x86 in [1]. The ioctl allows userspace to populate stage-2 mappings
before running a vCPU, reducing the number of stage-2 faults taken in
the run path. This is useful for post-copy migration, where stage-2
fault latency shows up directly in memory-intensive workloads.
On arm64, the GPA supplied to the ioctl is treated as an IPA in the
userspace-owned VM's memslot address space. If the vCPU most recently
ran a nested guest, KVM still targets the VM's canonical stage-2. It
does not interpret the GPA as an L2 IPA, and does not try to populate
the nested/shadow stage-2 selected by the vCPU's last run state.
The patches are:
- Allow callers of kvm_pgtable_get_leaf() to pass walk flags, so the
prefault path can walk stage-2 under the MMU read lock.
- Add arm64 support for KVM_PRE_FAULT_MEMORY.
- Enable pre_fault_memory_test on arm64.
- Add a backing-source option to pre_fault_memory_test.
- Add a nested (NV) selftest that prefaults on a vCPU whose last-run
context is backed by a shadow stage-2 MMU with an empty nested
stage-2 root.
The prefault flag and page_size output in the stage-2 fault descriptor
remain in this series so the arm64 implementation can advance by the
mapping granule installed by the fault path and report poison without
queueing a SIGBUS.
Tested with pre_fault_memory_test under an arm64 QEMU setup with
anonymous, shmem, anonymous_thp, anonymous_hugetlb and shared_hugetlb
backings, including 64K, 2M and 32M hugetlb pools, and with the new
nv_pre_fault_memory_test on an NV-capable setup.
=== Changes since v4 [2] ===
- Reworked nested virt semantics: arm64 now treats the ioctl GPA as the
VM/memslot IPA and always targets the canonical stage-2. It no longer
translates an L2 IPA through L1's stage-2.
- Documented the arm64 nested behavior in the KVM API text.
- Switch to the canonical stage-2 with the vCPU put/load helpers when
the vCPU last ran with a nested/shadow MMU, keeping VMID, VNCR and
shadow-MMU refcount state consistent.
- Split the kvm_pgtable_get_leaf() walk-flag plumbing into a prep patch
and walk existing mappings with KVM_PGTABLE_WALK_SHARED under the MMU
read lock.
- Tightened prefault fault handling: preserve fault info, set IL in the
synthetic ESR, handle existing mappings, return -EAGAIN for invalid
memslot races, and report -EHWPOISON without queueing SIGBUS.
- Avoid directly walking stage-2 page tables when pKVM is enabled.
Protected VMs remain unsupported via -EOPNOTSUPP.
- Preserve the selected selftest memory backing when recreating the
racing memslot.
- Add the nested (NV) prefault selftest, including an empty nested
stage-2 root to catch accidental L2-IPA interpretation.
=== Changes since v3 [3] ===
- Return -EOPNOTSUPP for protected VMs.
- Reworked nested-vCPU handling to translate an L2 IPA through L1's
stage-2. This has been superseded by the canonical VM-IPA semantics
described above.
- Make page_size unsigned and keep local declarations ordered at the
top of kvm_arch_vcpu_pre_fault_memory().
=== Changes since v2 [4] ===
- Update the synthetic fault info. Thanks Suzuki.
- Remove the selftest change for unaligned mmap allocations. Thanks
Sean.
[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20240710174031.312055-1-pbonzini@redhat.com/
[2]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20260113152643.18858-1-jackabt.amazon@gmail.com/
[3]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20251119154910.97716-1-jackabt.amazon@gmail.com/
[4]: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-arm-kernel/20251013151502.6679-1-jackabt.amazon@gmail.com/
Jack Thomson (5):
KVM: arm64: Pass walk flags to kvm_pgtable_get_leaf()
KVM: arm64: Add pre_fault_memory implementation
KVM: selftests: Enable pre_fault_memory_test for arm64
KVM: selftests: Add option for different backing in pre-fault tests
KVM: selftests: Add nested pre-fault test for arm64
Documentation/virt/kvm/api.rst | 18 +-
arch/arm64/include/asm/kvm_pgtable.h | 5 +-
arch/arm64/kvm/Kconfig | 1 +
arch/arm64/kvm/arm.c | 1 +
arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/nvhe/mem_protect.c | 10 +-
arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/pgtable.c | 5 +-
arch/arm64/kvm/mmu.c | 164 +++++++++++++-
arch/arm64/kvm/nested.c | 2 +-
tools/testing/selftests/kvm/Makefile.kvm | 2 +
.../kvm/arm64/nv_pre_fault_memory_test.c | 200 ++++++++++++++++++
.../selftests/kvm/pre_fault_memory_test.c | 150 ++++++++++---
11 files changed, 513 insertions(+), 45 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 tools/testing/selftests/kvm/arm64/nv_pre_fault_memory_test.c
base-commit: 98f826f3c500fda08d51fca434b7aefa6a2f7076
--
2.43.0
next reply other threads:[~2026-06-12 16:24 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2026-06-12 16:23 Jack Thomson [this message]
2026-06-12 16:23 ` [PATCH v5 1/5] KVM: arm64: Pass walk flags to kvm_pgtable_get_leaf() Jack Thomson
2026-06-12 16:23 ` [PATCH v5 2/5] KVM: arm64: Add pre_fault_memory implementation Jack Thomson
2026-06-12 16:23 ` [PATCH v5 3/5] KVM: selftests: Enable pre_fault_memory_test for arm64 Jack Thomson
2026-06-12 16:23 ` [PATCH v5 4/5] KVM: selftests: Add option for different backing in pre-fault tests Jack Thomson
2026-06-12 16:23 ` [PATCH v5 5/5] KVM: selftests: Add nested pre-fault test for arm64 Jack Thomson
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