Re: [PATCH stable-4.4.y] KVM: VMX: Fix x2apic check in vmx_msr_bitmap_mode()

From: Ben Hutchings
Date: Thu Feb 21 2019 - 12:00:50 EST


On Thu, 2019-02-21 at 17:20 +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 03:47:01PM +0100, Joerg Roedel wrote:
> > On Thu, Feb 21, 2019 at 03:15:30PM +0100, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > > Ugh, good catch!
> > >
> > > Any hint as to what type of testing that you did that caught this?ÂÂI
> > > keep asking people to run some kvm tests, but so far no one is :(
> >
> > We caught this at SUSE while testing candidate kernel updates for one of
> > our service packs using a 4.4-based kernel and debugging turned
> > out that this is issue came in via stable-updates. We also build a
> > vanilla-flavour of the kernel which is nearly identical to the upstream
> > stable tree, but what usually ends up in testing is the full tree with
> > other backports.
> >
> > This particular issue was found by updating some openstack machines with
> > the candidate kernel, which then triggered the problem in some guests.
> > It is also a very special one, since I was only able to trigger the
> > problem on Westmere-based machines with a specific guest-config.
>
> Nice work.ÂÂAny chance that "test" could be added to the kvm testing
> scripts that I think are being worked on somewhere?ÂÂIdeally we would
> have caught this before it ever hit the stable tree.

If I understood correctly, the bug is specific to my backport.

> Due to the lack of
> good KVM testing, that's one of the areas I am always most worried about
> :(

Since the behaviour in this area depends on the host CPU model this
might not help much.

Ben.

--
Ben Hutchings, Software Developer  Codethink Ltd
https://www.codethink.co.uk/ Dale House, 35 Dale Street
Manchester, M1 2HF, United Kingdom