Re: [PATCH v2 1/3] KVM: x86: add a new page track hook track_remove_slot

Sean Christopherson
2022-11-11T18:19:25Z

TL;DR: I'm going to try to add more aggressive patches for this into my series to
clean up the KVM side of things, along with many more patches to clean up the page
track APIs.

I'll post patches next week if things go well (fingers crossed), and if not I'll
give an update

On Fri, Nov 11, 2022, Yan Zhao wrote:
> Page track hook track_remove_slot is used to notify users that a slot
> has been removed and is called when a slot DELETE/MOVE is about to be
> completed.

Phrase this as a command, and explain _why_ the new hook is being added, e.g.

Add a new page track hook, track_remove_slot(), that is called when a
memslot DELETE/MOVE operation is about to be committed. The "remove"
hook will be used by KVMGT and will effectively replace the existing
track_flush_slot() altogether now that KVM itself doesn't rely on the
"flush" hook either.

The "flush" hook is flawed as it's invoked before the memslot operation
is guaranteed, i.e. KVM might ultimately keep the existing memslot without
notifying external page track users, a.k.a. KVMGT.

> Users of this hook can drop write protections in the removed slot.

Hmm, actually, on second thought, after thinking about what KVGT is doing in
response to the memslot update, I think we should be more aggressive and actively
prevent MOVE if there are external page trackers, i.e. if KVMGT is attached.

Dropping write protections when a memslot is being deleted is a waste of cycles.
The memslot and thus gfn_track is literally being deleted immediately after invoking
the hook, updating gfn_track from KVMGT is completely unecessary.

I.e. if we kill off the MOVE path, then KVMGT just needs to delete its hash table
entry.

Oooh! Looking at this code again made me realize that the larger page track cleanup
that I want to do might actually work. Long story short, I want to stop forcing
KVMGT to poke into KVM internals, but I thought there was a lock inversion problem.

But AFAICT, there is no such problem. And the cleanup I want to do will actually
fix an existing KVMGT bug: kvmgt_page_track_write() invokes kvmgt_gfn_is_write_protected()
without holding mmu_lock, and thus could consume garbage when walking the hash
table.

static void kvmgt_page_track_write(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, gpa_t gpa,
const u8 *val, int len,
struct kvm_page_track_notifier_node *node)
{
struct intel_vgpu *info =
container_of(node, struct intel_vgpu, track_node);

if (kvmgt_gfn_is_write_protected(info, gpa_to_gfn(gpa)))
intel_vgpu_page_track_handler(info, gpa,
(void *)val, len);
}

Acquiring mmu_lock isn't an option as intel_vgpu_page_track_handler() might sleep,
e.g. when acquiring vgpu_lock.

Let me see if the clean up I have in mind will actually work. If it does, I think
the end result will be quite nice for both KVM and KVMGT.