Re: [RFC PATCH v2 00/38] Nested Virtualization on KVM/ARM

Jintack Lim
2017-08-01T10:49:04Z

Hi Christoffer,

On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 9:00 AM, Christoffer Dall <cdall@linaro.org> wrote:
> Hi Jintack,
>
> On Tue, Jul 18, 2017 at 11:58:26AM -0500, Jintack Lim wrote:
>> Nested virtualization is the ability to run a virtual machine inside another
>> virtual machine. In other words, it’s about running a hypervisor (the guest
>> hypervisor) on top of another hypervisor (the host hypervisor).
>>
>> Supporting nested virtualization on ARM means that the hypervisor provides not
>> only EL0/EL1 execution environment to VMs as it usually does but also the
>> virtualization extensions including EL2 execution environment. Once the host
>> hypervisor provides those execution environments to the VMs, then the guest
>> hypervisor can run its own VMs (nested VMs) naturally.
>>
>> This series supports nested virtualization on arm64. ARM recently announced an
>> extension (ARMv8.3) which has support for nested virtualization[1]. This patch
>> set is based on the ARMv8.3 specification and tested on the FastModel with
>> ARMv8.3 extension.
>>
>> The whole patch set to support nested virtualization is huge over 70
>> patches, so I categorized them into four parts: CPU, memory, VGIC, and timer
>> virtualization. This patch series is the first part.
>>
>> CPU virtualization patch series provides basic nested virtualization framework
>> and instruction emulations including v8.1 VHE feature and v8.3 nested
>> virtualization feature for VMs.
>>
>> This patch series again can be divided into four parts. Patch 1 to 5 introduces
>> nested virtualization by discovering hardware feature, adding a kernel
>> parameter and allowing the userspace to set the initial CPU mode to EL2.
>>
>> Patch 6 to 25 are to support the EL2 execution environment, the virtual EL2, to
>> a VM on v8.0 architecture. We de-privilege the guest hypervisor and emulate the
>> virtual EL2 mode in EL1 using the hardware features provided by ARMv8.3; The
>> host hypervisor manages virtual EL2 register state for the guest hypervisor
>> and shadow EL1 register state that reflects the virtual EL2 register state to
>> run the guest hypervisor in EL1.
>>
>> Patch 26 to 33 add support for the virtual EL2 with Virtualization Host
>> Extensions. These patches emulate newly defined registers and bits in v8.1 and
>> allow the virtual EL2 to access EL2 register states via EL1 register accesses
>> as in the real EL2.
>>
>> Patch 34 to 38 are to support for the virtual EL2 with nested virtualization.
>> These enable recursive nested virtualization.
>>
>> This patch set is tested on the FastModel with the v8.3 extension for arm64 and
>> a cubietruck for arm32. On the FastModel, the host and the guest kernels are
>> compiled with and without VHE, so there are four combinations. I was able to
>> boot SMP Linux in the nested VM on all four configurations and able to run
>> hackbench. I also checked that regular VMs could boot when the nested
>> virtualization kernel parameter was not set. On the cubietruck, I also verified
>> that regular VMs could boot as well.
>>
>> I'll share my experiment setup shortly.
>>
>> Even though this work has some limitations and TODOs, I'd appreciate early
>> feedback on this RFC. Specifically, I'm interested in:
>>
>> - Overall design to manage vcpu context for the virtual EL2
>> - Verifying correct EL2 register configurations such as HCR_EL2, CPTR_EL2
>> (Patch 30 and 32)
>> - Patch organization and coding style
>>
>> This patch series is based on kvm/next d38338e.
>> The whole patch series including memory, VGIC, and timer patches is available
>> here:
>>
>> git@github.com:columbia/nesting-pub.git rfc-v2
>>
>> Limitations:
>> - There are some cases that the target exception level of a VM is ambiguous when
>> emulating eret instruction. I'm discussing this issue with Christoffer and
>> Marc. Meanwhile, I added a temporary patch (not included in this
>> series. f1beaba in the repo) and used 4.10.0 kernel when testing the guest
>> hypervisor with VHE.
>> - Recursive nested virtualization is not tested yet.
>> - Other hypervisors (such as Xen) on KVM are not tested.
>>
>> TODO:
>> - Submit memory, VGIC, and timer patches
>> - Evaluate regular VM performance to see if there's a negative impact.
>> - Test other hypervisors such as Xen on KVM
>> - Test recursive nested virtualization
>>
>
> I think this overall looks pretty good, and I think you can drop the RFC
> tag from the next revision, assuming the remaining patch sets for
> memory, vgic, and timers don't require some major controversial rework
> of these patches.

Thank you for your thorough review. I'm happy that we can drop the RFC tag :).

Thanks,
Jintack

>
> Thanks,
> -Christoffer
>
>> v1-->v2:
>> - Added support for the virtual EL2 with VHE
>> - Rewrote commit messages and comments from the perspective of supporting
>> execution environments to VMs, rather than from the perspective of the guest
>> hypervisor running in them.
>> - Fixed a few bugs to make it run on the FastModel.
>> - Tested on ARMv8.3 with four configurations. (host/guest. with/without VHE.)
>> - Rebased to kvm/next
>>
>> [1] https://www.community.arm.com/processors/b/blog/posts/armv8-a-architecture-2016-additions
>>
>> Christoffer Dall (7):
>> KVM: arm64: Add KVM nesting feature
>> KVM: arm64: Allow userspace to set PSR_MODE_EL2x
>> KVM: arm64: Add vcpu_mode_el2 primitive to support nesting
>> KVM: arm/arm64: Add a framework to prepare virtual EL2 execution
>> arm64: Add missing TCR hw defines
>> KVM: arm64: Create shadow EL1 registers
>> KVM: arm64: Trap EL1 VM register accesses in virtual EL2
>>
>> Jintack Lim (31):
>> arm64: Add ARM64_HAS_NESTED_VIRT feature
>> KVM: arm/arm64: Enable nested virtualization via command-line
>> KVM: arm/arm64: Check if nested virtualization is in use
>> KVM: arm64: Add EL2 system registers to vcpu context
>> KVM: arm64: Add EL2 special registers to vcpu context
>> KVM: arm64: Add the shadow context for virtual EL2 execution
>> KVM: arm64: Set vcpu context depending on the guest exception level
>> KVM: arm64: Synchronize EL1 system registers on virtual EL2 entry and
>> exit
>> KVM: arm64: Move exception macros and enums to a common file
>> KVM: arm64: Support to inject exceptions to the virtual EL2
>> KVM: arm64: Trap SPSR_EL1, ELR_EL1 and VBAR_EL1 from virtual EL2
>> KVM: arm64: Trap CPACR_EL1 access in virtual EL2
>> KVM: arm64: Handle eret instruction traps
>> KVM: arm64: Set a handler for the system instruction traps
>> KVM: arm64: Handle PSCI call via smc from the guest
>> KVM: arm64: Inject HVC exceptions to the virtual EL2
>> KVM: arm64: Respect virtual HCR_EL2.TWX setting
>> KVM: arm64: Respect virtual CPTR_EL2.TFP setting
>> KVM: arm64: Add macros to support the virtual EL2 with VHE
>> KVM: arm64: Add EL2 registers defined in ARMv8.1 to vcpu context
>> KVM: arm64: Emulate EL12 register accesses from the virtual EL2
>> KVM: arm64: Support a VM with VHE considering EL0 of the VHE host
>> KVM: arm64: Allow the virtual EL2 to access EL2 states without trap
>> KVM: arm64: Manage the shadow states when virtual E2H bit enabled
>> KVM: arm64: Trap and emulate CPTR_EL2 accesses via CPACR_EL1 from the
>> virtual EL2 with VHE
>> KVM: arm64: Emulate appropriate VM control system registers
>> KVM: arm64: Respect the virtual HCR_EL2.NV bit setting
>> KVM: arm64: Respect the virtual HCR_EL2.NV bit setting for EL12
>> register traps
>> KVM: arm64: Respect virtual HCR_EL2.TVM and TRVM settings
>> KVM: arm64: Respect the virtual HCR_EL2.NV1 bit setting
>> KVM: arm64: Respect the virtual CPTR_EL2.TCPAC setting
>>
>> Documentation/admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt | 4 +
>> arch/arm/include/asm/kvm_emulate.h | 17 ++
>> arch/arm/include/asm/kvm_host.h | 15 +
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/cpucaps.h | 3 +-
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/esr.h | 1 +
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/kvm_arm.h | 2 +
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/kvm_coproc.h | 3 +-
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/kvm_emulate.h | 56 ++++
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/kvm_host.h | 64 ++++-
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/kvm_hyp.h | 24 --
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/pgtable-hwdef.h | 6 +
>> arch/arm64/include/asm/sysreg.h | 70 +++++
>> arch/arm64/include/uapi/asm/kvm.h | 1 +
>> arch/arm64/kernel/asm-offsets.c | 1 +
>> arch/arm64/kernel/cpufeature.c | 11 +
>> arch/arm64/kvm/Makefile | 5 +-
>> arch/arm64/kvm/context.c | 346 +++++++++++++++++++++++
>> arch/arm64/kvm/emulate-nested.c | 83 ++++++
>> arch/arm64/kvm/guest.c | 2 +
>> arch/arm64/kvm/handle_exit.c | 89 +++++-
>> arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/entry.S | 13 +
>> arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/hyp-entry.S | 2 +-
>> arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/switch.c | 33 ++-
>> arch/arm64/kvm/hyp/sysreg-sr.c | 117 ++++----
>> arch/arm64/kvm/inject_fault.c | 12 -
>> arch/arm64/kvm/nested.c | 63 +++++
>> arch/arm64/kvm/reset.c | 8 +
>> arch/arm64/kvm/sys_regs.c | 359 +++++++++++++++++++++++-
>> arch/arm64/kvm/sys_regs.h | 8 +
>> arch/arm64/kvm/trace.h | 43 ++-
>> virt/kvm/arm/arm.c | 20 ++
>> 31 files changed, 1363 insertions(+), 118 deletions(-)
>> create mode 100644 arch/arm64/kvm/context.c
>> create mode 100644 arch/arm64/kvm/emulate-nested.c
>> create mode 100644 arch/arm64/kvm/nested.c
>>
>> --
>> 1.9.1
>>