Re: slow xp hibernation revisited

[Keir Fraser <keir.xen@gmail.com>]

On 04/06/2011 05:54, "James Harper" <james.harper@bendigoit.com.au> wrote:

>> It's the !test_bit(address_offset>>XC_PAGE_SHIFT,
> entry->valid_mapping)
>> that is causing the if expression to be true. From what I can see so
>> far, the bit representing the pfn in entry->valid_mapping is 0 because
>> err[] returned for that pfn was -EINVAL.
>> 
>> Maybe the test is superfluous? Is there a need to do the remap if all
>> the other variables in the expression are satisfied? If the remap was
>> already done and the page could not be mapped last time, what reasons
>> are there why it would succeed this time?
>> 
> 
> FWIW, removing the test_bit makes the hibernate go faster than my screen
> can refresh over a slow DSL connection and in a quick 30 second test
> doesn't appear to have any adverse effects.
> 
> If there is a chance that a subsequent call to qemu_remap_bucket with
> identical parameters could successfully map a page that couldn't be
> mapped in the previous call, are there any optimisations that could be
> done? Maybe only attempt to map the page being accessed rather than all
> pages in the bucket if the other parameters are identical?

I'm guessing this happens because of frequent guest CPU access to non-RAM
during hibernate? Unfortunately really the qemu checks do make sense, I'd
say, since the memory map of the guest can be changed dynamically , and we
currently only flush the map_cache on XENMEM_decrease_reservation
hypercalls.

One fix would be for Xen to know which regions of non-RAM are actually
emulated device areas, and only forward those to qemu. It could then
quick-fail on the rest.

However, the easiest fix would be to only re-try to map the one pfn under
test. Reloading a whole bucket takes bloody ages as they are *huge*: 256kB
in 32-bit qemu; 4MB in 64-bit qemu. It might be easiest to do a test re-map
of the one page to a scratch area, then iff it succeeds, *then* call
qemu_remap_bucket(). Then you remap the bucket only if something really has
changed, and you don't have to mess too much with modifying the bucket
yourself outside of remap_bucket.

How does that sound?

 -- Keir


> James
> 
> 
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