Re: [RFC v2 PATCH 2/7] KVM: Track the pid of the VM process

Christoffer Dall
2016-09-06T11:19:39Z

On Tue, Sep 06, 2016 at 12:07:59PM +0100, Punit Agrawal wrote:
> Christoffer Dall <christoffer.dall@linaro.org> writes:
>
> > On Tue, Sep 06, 2016 at 10:51:27AM +0100, Punit Agrawal wrote:
> >> Hi Christoffer,
> >>
> >> Christoffer Dall <christoffer.dall@linaro.org> writes:
> >>
> >> > On Mon, Sep 05, 2016 at 05:31:32PM +0100, Punit Agrawal wrote:
> >> >> Userspace tools such as perf can be used to profile individual
> >> >> processes.
> >> >>
> >> >> Track the PID of the virtual machine process to match profiling requests
> >> >> targeted at it. This can be used to take appropriate action to enable
> >> >> the requested profiling operations for the VMs of interest.
> >> >>
> >> >> Signed-off-by: Punit Agrawal <punit.agrawal@arm.com>
> >> >> Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
> >> >> Cc: "Radim Krčmář" <rkrcmar@redhat.com>
> >> >> Cc: Christoffer Dall <christoffer.dall@linaro.org>
> >> >> Cc: Marc Zyngier <marc.zyngier@arm.com>
> >> >> ---
> >> >> include/linux/kvm_host.h | 1 +
> >> >> virt/kvm/kvm_main.c | 2 ++
> >> >> 2 files changed, 3 insertions(+)
> >> >>
> >> >> diff --git a/include/linux/kvm_host.h b/include/linux/kvm_host.h
> >> >> index 9c28b4d..7c42c94 100644
> >> >> --- a/include/linux/kvm_host.h
> >> >> +++ b/include/linux/kvm_host.h
> >> >> @@ -374,6 +374,7 @@ struct kvm_memslots {
> >> >> struct kvm {
> >> >> spinlock_t mmu_lock;
> >> >> struct mutex slots_lock;
> >> >> + struct pid *pid;
> >> >> struct mm_struct *mm; /* userspace tied to this vm */
> >> >> struct kvm_memslots *memslots[KVM_ADDRESS_SPACE_NUM];
> >> >> struct srcu_struct srcu;
> >> >> diff --git a/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c b/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
> >> >> index 1950782..ab2535a 100644
> >> >> --- a/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
> >> >> +++ b/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
> >> >> @@ -613,6 +613,7 @@ static struct kvm *kvm_create_vm(unsigned long type)
> >> >> spin_lock_init(&kvm->mmu_lock);
> >> >> atomic_inc(&current->mm->mm_count);
> >> >> kvm->mm = current->mm;
> >> >> + kvm->pid = get_task_pid(current, PIDTYPE_PID);
> >> >
> >> > How dooes this deal with threading? Is the idea that the user by
> >> > specifying the main thread's pid will enable trapping for all vcpu
> >> > threads belonging to that VM?
> >>
> >> Yes that's correct - specifying the main thread PID will enable trapping
> >> for the VM (all vcpus).
> >>
> >> I am happy to move to a more suitable identifier if available.
> >>
> >
> > What is the 'main thread' ?
> >
> > Does something mandate that the VM is created by the thread group
> > leader? If not, is it not a bit strange from a user perspective, that
> > you have to find the specific subthread pid that created the vm to
> > enable this tracing for all vcpu threads and that the tgid doesn't work
> > in this case?
>
> Let me correct my terminology usage - the value recorded above (and used
> to identify the VM) should be the tgid. It is confusing because 'ps'
> reports it as pid.
>
> I picked the value as existing KVM code already uses the PID of the
> creating task (see kvm_create_vm_debugfs) to export VM statistics in
> debugfs.
>
> If I've got this wrong, then kvm_create_vm_debugfs also likely needs an
> update.
>
> What do you think?
>
When you do get_task_pid(current, PIDTYPE_PID) it actually gets the
kernel view of a PID which is the thead-id from userspace's point of
view, right?

I don't see why this has to be the same as the debugfs code, as there it
makes potentially more sense to thread-specific, but for your case, are
you not targeting the behavior that a user can do "ps aux | grep qemu"
or whatever, and then set tracing for the reported PID (which is
actually a tgid)?

If this is indeed the case, then I don't think the current code supports
this if QEMU was ever changed to create the VM with a different thread
than the tgl.

That being said, I'm typically wrong when I talk about userspace.

-Christoffer