Re: Possible nohz-full/RCU issue in arm64 KVM

Paul E. McKenney
2021-12-17T18:13:47Z

On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 06:02:23PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On 12/17/21 17:45, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 05:34:04PM +0100, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> > > On 12/17/21 17:07, Paul E. McKenney wrote:
> > > > > rcu_note_context_switch() is a point-in-time notification; it's not strictly
> > > > > necessary, but it may improve performance a bit by avoiding unnecessary IPIs
> > > > > from the RCU subsystem.
> > > > >
> > > > > There's no benefit from doing it when you're back from the guest, because at
> > > > > that point the CPU is just running normal kernel code.
> > > >
> > > > Do scheduling-clock interrupts from guest mode have the "user" parameter
> > > > set? If so, that would keep RCU happy.
> > >
> > > No, thread is in supervisor mode. But after every interrupt (timer tick or
> > > anything), one of three things can happen:
> > >
> > > * KVM will go around the execution loop and invoke rcu_note_context_switch()
> > > again
> > >
> > > * or KVM will go back to user space
> >
> > Here "user space" is a user process as opposed to a guest OS?
>
> Yes, that code runs from ioctl(KVM_RUN) and the ioctl will return to the
> calling process.

Intriguing. A user process within the guest OS or a user process outside
of any guest OS, that is, within the host?

Thanx, Paul

> Paolo
>
> > > * or the thread will be preempted
> > >
> > > and either will keep RCU happy as far as I understand.
> >
> > Regardless of the answer to my question above, yes, these will keep
> > RCU happy. ;-)