Re: [PATCH v4 22/30] context_tracking: Exit CT_STATE_IDLE upon irq/nmi entry

Valentin Schneider
2025-01-27T11:17:10Z

On 22/01/25 01:22, Frederic Weisbecker wrote:
> Le Tue, Jan 14, 2025 at 06:51:35PM +0100, Valentin Schneider a écrit :
>> ct_nmi_{enter, exit}() only touches the RCU watching counter and doesn't
>> modify the actual CT state part context_tracking.state. This means that
>> upon receiving an IRQ when idle, the CT_STATE_IDLE->CT_STATE_KERNEL
>> transition only happens in ct_idle_exit().
>>
>> One can note that ct_nmi_enter() can only ever be entered with the CT state
>> as either CT_STATE_KERNEL or CT_STATE_IDLE, as an IRQ/NMI happenning in the
>> CT_STATE_USER or CT_STATE_GUEST states will be routed down to ct_user_exit().
>
> Are you sure? An NMI can fire between guest_state_enter_irqoff() and
> __svm_vcpu_run().

Urgh, you're quite right.

> And NMIs interrupting userspace don't call
> enter_from_user_mode(). In fact they don't call irqentry_enter_from_user_mode()
> like regular IRQs but irqentry_nmi_enter() instead. Well that's for archs
> implementing common entry code, I can't speak for the others.
>

That I didn't realize, so thank you for pointing it out. Having another
look now, I mistook DEFINE_IDTENTRY_RAW(exc_int3) for the general case
when it really isn't :(

> Unifying the behaviour between user and idle such that the IRQs/NMIs exit the
> CT_STATE can be interesting but I fear this may not come for free. You would
> need to save the old state on IRQ/NMI entry and restore it on exit.
>

That's what I tried to avoid, but it sounds like there's no nice way around it.

> Do we really need it?
>

Well, my problem with not doing IDLE->KERNEL transitions on IRQ/NMI is that
this leads the IPI deferral logic to observe a technically-out-of-sync sate
for remote CPUs. Consider:

CPUx CPUy
state := CT_STATE_IDLE
...
~>IRQ
...
ct_nmi_enter()
[in the kernel proper by now]

text_poke_bp_batch()
ct_set_cpu_work(CPUy, CT_WORK_SYNC)
READ CPUy ct->state
`-> CT_IDLE_STATE
`-> defer IPI

I thought this meant I would need to throw out the "defer IPIs if CPU is
idle" part, but AIUI this also affects CT_STATE_USER and CT_STATE_GUEST,
which is a bummer :(