Re: [PATCH v6 04/16] KVM: x86/pmu: Set MSR_IA32_MISC_ENABLE_EMON bit when vPMU is enabled

[Sean Christopherson]

On Wed, May 12, 2021, Xu, Like wrote:
> Hi Venkatesh Srinivas,
> 
> On 2021/5/12 9:58, Venkatesh Srinivas wrote:
> > On 5/10/21, Like Xu <like.xu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > On Intel platforms, the software can use the IA32_MISC_ENABLE[7] bit to
> > > detect whether the processor supports performance monitoring facility.
> > > 
> > > It depends on the PMU is enabled for the guest, and a software write
> > > operation to this available bit will be ignored.
> > Is the behavior that writes to IA32_MISC_ENABLE[7] are ignored (rather than #GP)
> > documented someplace?
> 
> The bit[7] behavior of the real hardware on the native host is quite
> suspicious.

Ugh.  Can you file an SDM bug to get the wording and accessibility updated?  The
current phrasing is a mess:

  Performance Monitoring Available (R)
  1 = Performance monitoring enabled.
  0 = Performance monitoring disabled.

The (R) is ambiguous because most other entries that are read-only use (RO), and
the "enabled vs. disabled" implies the bit is writable and really does control
the PMU.  But on my Haswell system, it's read-only.  Assuming the bit is supposed
to be a read-only "PMU supported bit", the SDM should be:

  Performance Monitoring Available (RO)
  1 = Performance monitoring supported.
  0 = Performance monitoring not supported.

And please update the changelog to explain the "why" of whatever the behavior
ends up being.  The "what" is obvious from the code.

> To keep the semantics consistent and simple, we propose ignoring write
> operation in the virtualized world, since whether or not to expose PMU is
> configured by the hypervisor user space and not by the guest side.

Making up our own architectural behavior because it's convient is not a good
idea.

> > > diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/pmu_intel.c b/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/pmu_intel.c
> > > index 9efc1a6b8693..d9dbebe03cae 100644
> > > --- a/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/pmu_intel.c
> > > +++ b/arch/x86/kvm/vmx/pmu_intel.c
> > > @@ -488,6 +488,7 @@ static void intel_pmu_refresh(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu)
> > >   	if (!pmu->version)
> > >   		return;
> > > 
> > > +	vcpu->arch.ia32_misc_enable_msr |= MSR_IA32_MISC_ENABLE_EMON;

Hmm, normally I would say overwriting the guest's value is a bad idea, but if
the bit really is a read-only "PMU supported" bit, then this is the correct
behavior, albeit weird if userspace does a late CPUID update (though that's
weird no matter what).

> > >   	perf_get_x86_pmu_capability(&x86_pmu);
> > > 
> > >   	pmu->nr_arch_gp_counters = min_t(int, eax.split.num_counters,
> > > diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> > > index 5bd550eaf683..abe3ea69078c 100644
> > > --- a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> > > +++ b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
> > > @@ -3211,6 +3211,7 @@ int kvm_set_msr_common(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, struct
> > > msr_data *msr_info)
> > >   		}
> > >   		break;
> > >   	case MSR_IA32_MISC_ENABLE:
> > > +		data &= ~MSR_IA32_MISC_ENABLE_EMON;

However, this is not.  If it's a read-only bit, then toggling the bit should
cause a #GP.

> > >   		if (!kvm_check_has_quirk(vcpu->kvm, KVM_X86_QUIRK_MISC_ENABLE_NO_MWAIT)
> > > &&
> > >   		    ((vcpu->arch.ia32_misc_enable_msr ^ data) &
> > > MSR_IA32_MISC_ENABLE_MWAIT)) {
> > >   			if (!guest_cpuid_has(vcpu, X86_FEATURE_XMM3))
> > > --