Re: [PATCH v2 03/26] KVM: x86/mmu: Derive shadow MMU page role from parent

Peter Xu
2022-03-30T14:25:57Z

On Tue, Mar 22, 2022 at 11:30:07AM -0700, David Matlack wrote:
> > > +static union kvm_mmu_page_role kvm_mmu_child_role(u64 *sptep, bool direct, u32 access)
> > > +{
> > > + struct kvm_mmu_page *parent_sp = sptep_to_sp(sptep);
> > > + union kvm_mmu_page_role role;
> > > +
> > > + role = parent_sp->role;
> > > + role.level--;
> > > + role.access = access;
> > > + role.direct = direct;
> > > +
> > > + /*
> > > + * If the guest has 4-byte PTEs then that means it's using 32-bit,
> > > + * 2-level, non-PAE paging. KVM shadows such guests using 4 PAE page
> > > + * directories, each mapping 1/4 of the guest's linear address space
> > > + * (1GiB). The shadow pages for those 4 page directories are
> > > + * pre-allocated and assigned a separate quadrant in their role.
> > > + *
> > > + * Since we are allocating a child shadow page and there are only 2
> > > + * levels, this must be a PG_LEVEL_4K shadow page. Here the quadrant
> > > + * will either be 0 or 1 because it maps 1/2 of the address space mapped
> > > + * by the guest's PG_LEVEL_4K page table (or 4MiB huge page) that it
> > > + * is shadowing. In this case, the quadrant can be derived by the index
> > > + * of the SPTE that points to the new child shadow page in the page
> > > + * directory (parent_sp). Specifically, every 2 SPTEs in parent_sp
> > > + * shadow one half of a guest's page table (or 4MiB huge page) so the
> > > + * quadrant is just the parity of the index of the SPTE.
> > > + */
> > > + if (role.has_4_byte_gpte) {
> > > + BUG_ON(role.level != PG_LEVEL_4K);
> > > + role.quadrant = (sptep - parent_sp->spt) % 2;
> > > + }
> >
> > This made me wonder whether role.quadrant can be dropped, because it seems
> > it can be calculated out of the box with has_4_byte_gpte, level and spte
> > offset. I could have missed something, though..
>
> I think you're right that we could compute it on-the-fly. But it'd be
> non-trivial to remove since it's currently used to ensure the sp->role
> and sp->gfn uniquely identifies each shadow page (e.g. when checking
> for collisions in the mmu_page_hash).

Makes sense.

--
Peter Xu