Re: [bug] __blk_mq_run_hw_queue suspicious rcu usage

[David Rientjes]

On Thu, 28 Nov 2019, Christoph Hellwig wrote:

> > So we're left with making dma_pool_alloc(GFP_ATOMIC) actually be atomic 
> > even when the DMA needs to be unencrypted for SEV.  Christoph's suggestion 
> > was to wire up dmapool in kernel/dma/remap.c for this.  Is that necessary 
> > to be done for all devices that need to do dma_pool_alloc(GFP_ATOMIC) or 
> > can we do it within the DMA API itself so it's transparent to the driver?
> 
> It needs to be transparent to the driver.  Lots of drivers use GFP_ATOMIC
> dma allocations, and all of them are broken on SEV setups currently.
> 

Not my area, so bear with me.

Since all DMA must be unencrypted in this case, what happens if all 
dma_direct_alloc_pages() calls go through the DMA pool in 
kernel/dma/remap.c when force_dma_unencrypted(dev) == true since 
__PAGE_ENC is cleared for these ptes?  (Ignoring for a moment that this 
special pool should likely be a separate dma pool.)

I assume a general depletion of that atomic pool so 
DEFAULT_DMA_COHERENT_POOL_SIZE becomes insufficient.  I'm not sure what 
size any DMA pool wired up for this specific purpose would need to be 
sized at, so I assume dynamic resizing is required.

It shouldn't be *that* difficult to supplement kernel/dma/remap.c with the 
ability to do background expansion of the atomic pool when nearing its 
capacity for this purpose?  I imagine that if we just can't allocate pages 
within the DMA mask that it's the only blocker to dynamic expansion and we 
don't oom kill for lowmem.  But perhaps vm.lowmem_reserve_ratio is good 
enough protection?

Beyond that, I'm not sure what sizing would be appropriate if this is to 
be a generic solution in the DMA API for all devices that may require 
unecrypted memory.