Re: [PATCH 0/7] xen/events: bug fixes and some diagnostic aids

Julien Grall
2021-02-06T19:20:34Z

Hi Juergen,

On 06/02/2021 10:49, Juergen Gross wrote:
> The first three patches are fixes for XSA-332. The avoid WARN splats
> and a performance issue with interdomain events.

Thanks for helping to figure out the problem. Unfortunately, I still see
reliably the WARN splat with the latest Linux master (1e0d27fce010) +
your first 3 patches.

I am using Xen 4.11 (1c7d984645f9) and dom0 is forced to use the 2L
events ABI.

After some debugging, I think I have an idea what's went wrong. The
problem happens when the event is initially bound from vCPU0 to a
different vCPU.

From the comment in xen_rebind_evtchn_to_cpu(), we are masking the
event to prevent it being delivered on an unexpected vCPU. However, I
believe the following can happen:

vCPU0 | vCPU1
|
| Call xen_rebind_evtchn_to_cpu()
receive event X |
| mask event X
| bind to vCPU1
<vCPU descheduled> | unmask event X
|
| receive event X
|
| handle_edge_irq(X)
handle_edge_irq(X) | -> handle_irq_event()
| -> set IRQD_IN_PROGRESS
-> set IRQS_PENDING |
| -> evtchn_interrupt()
| -> clear IRQD_IN_PROGRESS
| -> IRQS_PENDING is set
| -> handle_irq_event()
| -> evtchn_interrupt()
| -> WARN()
|

All the lateeoi handlers expect a ONESHOT semantic and
evtchn_interrupt() is doesn't tolerate any deviation.

I think the problem was introduced by 7f874a0447a9 ("xen/events: fix
lateeoi irq acknowledgment") because the interrupt was disabled
previously. Therefore we wouldn't do another iteration in handle_edge_irq().

Aside the handlers, I think it may impact the defer EOI mitigation
because in theory if a 3rd vCPU is joining the party (let say vCPU A
migrate the event from vCPU B to vCPU C). So info->{eoi_cpu, irq_epoch,
eoi_time} could possibly get mangled?

For a fix, we may want to consider to hold evtchn_rwlock with the write
permission. Although, I am not 100% sure this is going to prevent
everything.

Does my write-up make sense to you?

Cheers,

--
Julien Grall