Re: [PATCH v3] KVM: nVMX: Fix incorrect preemption timer vmexit in nested guest

From: Wanpeng Li
Date: Wed Jul 06 2016 - 21:58:55 EST


2016-07-07 1:11 GMT+08:00 Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@xxxxxxxxxx>:
>
>
> On 06/07/2016 18:03, Haozhong Zhang wrote:
>>>> This patch also fixed the crash of L1 Xen with L2 HVM guest. Xen does
>>>> not enable preemption timer for HVM guests, and will get panic if it
>>>> receives a preemption timer vmexit.
>>>
>>> Thanks! I'm still not sure why the bit is set in the vmcs02 though...
>>
>> Yes, it looks really weird.
>>
>> I replaced "return false" in Wanpeng's patch by
>>
>> pr_info("VMCS: preemption timer enabled = %d\n",
>> !!(vmcs_read32(PIN_BASED_VM_EXEC_CONTROL) & PIN_BASED_VMX_PREEMPTION_TIMER));
>>
>> and redid my test. As expected, L1 Xen crashed due to the unexpected
>> preemption timer vmexit. I got a log from above statement just before crash:
>>
>> VMCS: preemption timer enabled = 1
>>
>> which is expected to be 0, because preemption timer is disabled in
>> vmcs02. I also modified L1 Xen to dump VMCS at crash, and it says
>> preemption timer is disabled.
>>
>> I noticed Jim Mattson recently sent a patch "KVM: nVMX: Fix memory
>> corruption when using VMCS shadowing" to fix the inconsistency between
>> vmcs12 and its shadow. Is it relevant here? I'll test his patch
>> tomorrow.
>
> No, it shouldn't have any effect.
>
> I think it happens when the post_block hook switches back from sw_timer
> to hv_timer, and L2 is running. So the right fix should be along the
> lines of what I posted earlier. If you don't beat me to it, I'll take
> another look tomorrow.

I think I just figure out the root cause, I will send out a patch to fix it.

Regards,
Wanpeng Li