Re: [PATCH] 8250: Hypervisors always export working 16550A UARTs.

Don Dutile
2016-04-29T18:14:09Z

On 04/29/2016 11:37 AM, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 08:16:35AM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 29, 2016 at 09:10:06AM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>>> On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 03:56:33PM -0700, Greg KH wrote:
>>>> On Thu, Apr 28, 2016 at 11:18:33PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>>>>> Currently autoconf spends 25ms (on my laptop) testing if the UART
>>>>> exported to it by KVM is an 8250 without FIFO and/or with strange
>>>>> quirks, which it obviously isn't. Assume it is exported to us by a
>>>>> hypervisor, it's a normal, working 16550A.
>>>>>
>>>>> Signed-off-by: Richard W.M. Jones <rjones@redhat.com>
>>>>> ---
>>>>> drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c | 7 +++++++
>>>>> 1 file changed, 7 insertions(+)
>>>>>
>>>>> diff --git a/drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c b/drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c
>>>>> index 00ad2637..de19924 100644
>>>>> --- a/drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c
>>>>> +++ b/drivers/tty/serial/8250/8250_port.c
>>>>> @@ -1171,6 +1171,13 @@ static void autoconfig(struct uart_8250_port *up)
>>>>> if (!port->iobase && !port->mapbase && !port->membase)
>>>>> return;
>>>>>
>>>>> + /* Hypervisors always export working 16550A devices. */
>>>>> + if (cpu_has_hypervisor) {
>>>>> + up->port.type = PORT_16550A;
>>>>> + up->capabilities |= UART_CAP_FIFO;
>>>>> + return;
>>>>> + }
>>>>
>>>> Have you audited vmware, virtualbox, and everyone else that provides a
>>>> virtual uart device that it will work properly here?
>>>>
>>>> qemu isn't all the world :)
>>>
>>> Attached below is a slightly different approach. If the user passes a
>>> special flag on the kernel command line then we force 16550A and avoid
>>> the 25ms delay. Since the user chooses the flag, any concerns about
>>> the behaviour of the hypervisor or use of VFIO should be moot.
>>
>> No, no more module parameters, that's crazy, what happens when you have
>> 64 serial ports in a system, which one is this option for?
>
> In this (very special) case, the domain is running under qemu and
> I know it only has one serial port that doesn't need probing.
>
> What's the right way to avoid this 25ms delay?
>
> Rich.
>
param && cpu_has_hypervisor?
.... that restricts it to your use case.
... you can 1+ which hypervisor it is if you add export for pv_info(.name).
... all of which only works on x86, as cpu_has_hypervisor is defined here:
arch/x86/include/asm/cpufeature.h

which points to a better design based on config option:
if(CONFIG_<NEW_OPTION>) <your optimization of choice>
then it can be optimized in & out as needed.
Single, binary kernel for bare-metal & virt (e.g., rhel) would
bear the additional CONFIG_xxx check, but that's during boot/init,
which isn't perf sensitive on real hw.

You could then use the above CONFIG_NEW_OPTION to optimize other kvm-guest
boot init callbacks/paths.