Re: [PATCH v8 7/7] arm64: kvm: handle SError Interrupt by categorization

[James Morse]

Hi gengdongjiu,

On 06/12/17 10:26, gengdongjiu wrote:
> On 2017/11/15 0:00, James Morse wrote:
>>> +		 * error has not been propagated
>>> +		 */
>>> +		run->exit_reason = KVM_EXIT_EXCEPTION;
>>> +		run->ex.exception = ESR_ELx_EC_SERROR;
>>> +		run->ex.error_code = KVM_SEI_SEV_RECOVERABLE;
>>> +		return 0;
>> We should not pass RAS notifications to user space. The kernel either handles
>> them, or it panics(). User space shouldn't even know if the kernel supports RAS
>> until it gets an MCEERR signal.
>>
>> You're making your firmware-first notification an EL3->EL0 signal, bypassing the OS.
>>
>> If we get a RAS SError and there are no CPER records or values in the ERR nodes,
>> we should panic as it looks like the CPU/firmware is broken. (spurious RAS errors)

> do you think whether we need to set the guest ESR by user space?  if need, I need to
> notify user space that there is a SError happen and need to set ESR for guest in some place of
> KVM.

I think you are still coming from a world where user-space gets raw RAS
notifications via KVM. This should not happen because the notification method is
private to firmware and the kernel. KVM is just in the way when a guest is running.

Notifications reaching KVM should be plumbed into the APEI-firmware-first-code
or eventually, a kernel-first mechanism if APEI doesn't 'claim' them.

The kernel RAS code may signal user-space with the symptoms of the error, and
user-space may decided to generate a new RAS notification for the guest.

This should function in exactly the same way, regardless of which notification
method is in use between the kernel and firmware. (its the only way to make this
future-proof).

Which notification user-space chooses to use entirely depends on what (if
anything) it advertised to the guest in the HEST. User-space has to be in
control of triggering any SError, not just overriding the ESR when KVM has
decided it wants to kill the guest.


> so here I return a error code to user space. you mean we should not pass RAS notifications
> to user space, so could you give some suggestion how to notify user space to set guest ESR.

KVM shouldn't give the guest an SError when it takes a RAS notification, it
should pass the notification to the kernel RAS code. It only needs to 'fall
through' to some default cause if both APEI and kernel-first deny-all-knowledge
of this notification.


The end-to-end flow is then (assuming no-VHE):
(1)An error occurs, taking the CPU to EL3.
EL3: triage the error, generate CPER, notify the OS
EL2: KVM takes the notification, exits the guest, returns to host EL1.
EL1: KVM handle_exit() calls APEI to handle the error.
This is the end of KVMs involvement in RAS - its just plumbing.

(2)APEI processes the CPER records and signals affected processes.
If KVM's user-space is affected, KVM will spot the pending signal when it goes
to re-enter the guest, and exit to user-space instead.
Qemu takes the SIGBUS_MCEERR_A{O,R}.

(3) Qemu decides it wants to hand the guest a RAS error, it populates the CPER
records (in memory only Qemu knows about), then drives the KVM API to make the
appropriate notification appear.


(1) only happens if the guest was running when the error arrived. GHES has ~4
flavours of IRQ which may be used to describe corruption in guest memory. Steps
(2) and (3) are exactly the same in this case.

Qemu may decide to trigger RAS errors all by itself, (probably for testing and
debugging), in which case (1) and (2) don't happen, but (3), is exactly the same.


This way platform-firmware/host-kernel can use kernel-first or firmware-first
with any of the notifications, independently from Qemu/guest-kernel making a
different kernel-first or firmware-first with different notifications.

Passing information out of KVM breaks this, forcing Qemu to know about the
mechanism platform-firmware is using.


We need to tackle (1) and (3) separately. For (3) we need some API that lets
Qemu _trigger_ an SError in the guest, with a specified ESR. But, we don't have
a way of migrating pending SError yet... which is where I got stuck last time I
was looking at this.



James