Re: [PATCH 0/4] Virtual Machine Time Accounting

[Martin Schwidefsky <schwidefsky@de.ibm.com>]

On Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:16:38 +0200
Peter Zijlstra <peterz@infradead.org> wrote:

> These patches never seem to have made it onto LKML?!
> 
> On Mon, 2007-08-20 at 15:13 +0200, Laurent Vivier wrote:
> > The aim of these four patches is to introduce Virtual Machine time accounting.
> > 
> > _Ingo_, as these patches modify files of the scheduler, could you have a look to
> > them, please ?
> > 
> > [PATCH 1/4] as recent CPUs introduce a third running state, after "user" and
> > "system", we need a new field, "guest", in cpustat to store the time used by
> > the CPU to run virtual CPU. Modify /proc/stat to display this new field.
> > 
> > [PATCH 2/4] like for cpustat, introduce the "gtime" (guest time of the task) and
> > "cgtime" (guest time of the task children) fields for the
> > tasks. Modify signal_struct and task_struct. Modify /proc/<pid>/stat to display
> > these new fields.
> > 
> > [PATCH 3/4] modify account_system_time() to add cputime to cpustat->guest if we
> > are running a VCPU. We add this cputime to  cpustat->user instead of
> > cpustat->system because this part of KVM code is in fact user code although it
> > is executed in the kernel. We duplicate VCPU time between guest and user to
> > allow an unmodified "top(1)" to display correct value. A modified "top(1)" is
> > able to display good cpu user time and cpu guest time by subtracting cpu guest
> > time from cpu user time. Update "gtime" and "cgtime" in signal_struct and
> > task_struct accordingly.
> > 
> > [PATCH 4/4] Modify KVM to update guest time accounting.
> 
> Isn't this exactly what CONFIG_VIRT_CPU_ACCOUNTING is about?

Not really, CONFIG_VIRT_CPU_ACCOUNT is a mechanism to sort out the
steal time in the >guest< and to increase the precision of the cpu
accounting values in general. The patches from Laurent improve the
code in the >host< that sorts out guest time vs. system time. The
patches do make sense to me.

-- 
blue skies,
   Martin.

"Reality continues to ruin my life." - Calvin.