Re: [PATCH 4/6] mshv: limit SynIC management to MSHV-owned resources

[Anirudh Rayabharam]

On Fri, Mar 27, 2026 at 01:19:15PM -0700, Jork Loeser wrote:
> The SynIC is shared between VMBus and MSHV. VMBus owns the message
> page (SIMP), event flags page (SIEFP), global enable (SCONTROL), and
> SINT2. MSHV adds SINT0, SINT5, and the event ring page (SIRBP).
> 
> Currently mshv_synic_init() redundantly enables SIMP, SIEFP, and
> SCONTROL that VMBus already configured, and mshv_synic_cleanup()
> disables all of them. This is wrong because MSHV can be torn down
> while VMBus is still active. In particular, a kexec reboot notifier
> tears down MSHV first. Disabling SCONTROL, SIMP, and SIEFP out from
> under VMBus causes its later cleanup to write SynIC MSRs while SynIC
> is disabled, which the hypervisor does not tolerate.
> 
> Restrict MSHV to managing only the resources it owns:
> - SINT0, SINT5: mask on cleanup, unmask on init
> - SIRBP: enable/disable as before
> - SIMP, SIEFP, SCONTROL: on L1VH leave entirely to VMBus (it
>   already enabled them); on root partition VMBus doesn't run, so
>   MSHV must enable/disable them

Maybe it's time to extract all the synic management stuff to a separate
file to act like synic "driver" which facilitates synic access to
mutiple users i.e. mshv & vmbus.

Thanks,
Anirudh.