Re: [PATCH v5 20/23] KVM: arm64: GICv4.1: Plumb SGI implementation selection in the distributor

Zenghui Yu
2020-03-23T12:40:57Z

Hi Marc,

On 2020/3/23 16:25, Marc Zyngier wrote:
> Hi Zenghui,
>
> [...]
>
>>> And actually, maybe we can handle that pretty cheaply. If userspace
>>> tries to restore GICD_TYPER2 to a value that isn't what KVM can
>>> offer, we just return an error. Exactly like we do for GICD_IIDR.
>>> Hence the following patch:
>>>
>>> diff --git a/virt/kvm/arm/vgic/vgic-mmio-v3.c
>>> b/virt/kvm/arm/vgic/vgic-mmio-v3.c
>>> index 28b639fd1abc..e72dcc454247 100644
>>> --- a/virt/kvm/arm/vgic/vgic-mmio-v3.c
>>> +++ b/virt/kvm/arm/vgic/vgic-mmio-v3.c
>>> @@ -156,6 +156,7 @@ static int vgic_mmio_uaccess_write_v3_misc(struct
>>> kvm_vcpu *vcpu,
>>>       struct vgic_dist *dist = &vcpu->kvm->arch.vgic;
>>>
>>>       switch (addr & 0x0c) {
>>> +    case GICD_TYPER2:
>>>       case GICD_IIDR:
>>>           if (val != vgic_mmio_read_v3_misc(vcpu, addr, len))
>>>               return -EINVAL;
>>>
>>> Being a RO register, writing something that isn't compatible with the
>>> possible behaviour of the hypervisor will just return an error.
>>
>> This is really a nice point to address my concern! I'm happy to see
>> this in v6 now.
>>
>>>
>>> What do you think?
>>
>> I agreed with you, with a bit nervous though. Some old guests (which
>> have no knowledge about GICv4.1 vSGIs and don't care about nASSGIcap
>> at all) will also fail to migrate from A to B, just because now we
>> present two different (unused) GICD_TYPER2 registers to them.
>>
>> Is it a little unfair to them :-) ?
>
> I never pretended to be fair! ;-)
>
> I'm happy to prevent migrating from a v4.1 system (A) to a v4.0
> system (B). As soon as the guest has run, it isn't safe to do so
> (it may have read TYPER2, and now knows about vSGIs). We *could*
> track this and find ways to migrate this state as well, but it
> feels fragile.
>
> Migrating from B to A is more appealing. It should be possible to
> do so without much difficulty (just check that the nASSGIcap bit
> is either 0 or equal to KVM's view of the capability).
>
> But overall I seriously doubt we can easily migrate guests across
> very different HW. We've been talking about this for years, and
> we still don't have a good solution for it given the diversity
> of the ecosystem... :-/

Fair enough. Thanks for your detailed explanation!

Zenghui