Re: [PATCH v5 01/13] KVM: x86: Cache total page count to avoid traversing the memslot array

From: Maciej S. Szmigiero
Date: Wed Nov 03 2021 - 07:59:48 EST


On 01.11.2021 23:29, Sean Christopherson wrote:
On Wed, Oct 20, 2021, Sean Christopherson wrote:
On Wed, Oct 20, 2021, Maciej S. Szmigiero wrote:
On 20.10.2021 00:24, Sean Christopherson wrote:
E.g. the whole thing can be

if (!kvm->arch.n_requested_mmu_pages &&
(change == KVM_MR_CREATE || change == KVM_MR_DELETE)) {
unsigned long nr_mmu_pages;

if (change == KVM_MR_CREATE) {
kvm->arch.n_memslots_pages += new->npages;
} else {
WARN_ON(kvm->arch.n_memslots_pages < old->npages);
kvm->arch.n_memslots_pages -= old->npages;
}

nr_mmu_pages = (unsigned long)kvm->arch.n_memslots_pages;
nr_mmu_pages *= (KVM_PERMILLE_MMU_PAGES / 1000);

The above line will set nr_mmu_pages to zero since KVM_PERMILLE_MMU_PAGES
is 20, so when integer-divided by 1000 will result in a multiplication
coefficient of zero.

Ugh, math. And thus do_div() to avoid the whole 64-bit divide issue on 32-bit KVM.
Bummer.

I was revisiting this today because (a) simply making n_memslots_pages a u64 doesn't
cleanly handle the case where the resulting nr_mmu_pages would wrap,

Handling this case without capping total n_memslots_pages would require
either capping memslots_pages on 32-bit KVM to make it fit in 32-bits or
changing kvm_mmu_change_mmu_pages() and all the logic further down to
accept u64's.

(b) any fix
in that are should really go in a separate patch to fix
kvm_mmu_calculate_default_mmu_pages() and then carry that behavior forward

But as I dove deeper (and deeper), I came to the conclusion that supporting a
total number of memslot pages that doesn't fit in an unsigned long is a waste of
our time. With a 32-bit kernel, userspace can at most address 3gb of virtual
memory, whereas wrapping the total number of pages would require 4tb+ of guest
physical memory. Even with x86's second address space for SMM, that means userspace
would need to alias all of guest memory more than one _thousand_ times. And on
older hardware with MAXPHYADDR < 43, the guest couldn't actually access any of those
aliases even if userspace lied about guest.MAXPHYADDR.

So unless I'm missing something, or PPC or MIPS has some crazy way for a 32-bit
host to support 4TB of guest memory, my vote would be to explicitly disallow
creating more memslot pages than can fit in an unsigned long. Then x86 KVM could
reuse the cache nr_memslot_pages and x86's MMU wouldn't have to update a big pile
of code to support a scenario that practically speaking is useless.

diff --git a/include/linux/kvm_host.h b/include/linux/kvm_host.h
index 72b329e82089..acabdbdef5cf 100644
--- a/include/linux/kvm_host.h
+++ b/include/linux/kvm_host.h
@@ -552,6 +552,7 @@ struct kvm {
*/
struct mutex slots_arch_lock;
struct mm_struct *mm; /* userspace tied to this vm */
+ unsigned long nr_memslot_pages;
struct kvm_memslots __rcu *memslots[KVM_ADDRESS_SPACE_NUM];
struct kvm_vcpu *vcpus[KVM_MAX_VCPUS];

diff --git a/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c b/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
index 8bf4b89cfa03..c63fc5c05322 100644
--- a/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
+++ b/virt/kvm/kvm_main.c
@@ -1567,6 +1567,15 @@ static void kvm_commit_memory_region(struct kvm *kvm,
const struct kvm_memory_slot *new,
enum kvm_mr_change change)
{
+ /*
+ * Update the total number of memslot pages before calling the arch
+ * hook so that architectures can consume the result directly.
+ */
+ if (change == KVM_MR_DELETE)
+ kvm->nr_memslot_pages -= old->npages;
+ else if (change == KVM_MR_CREATE)
+ kvm->nr_memslot_pages += new->npages;
+
kvm_arch_commit_memory_region(kvm, old, new, change);

/*
@@ -1738,6 +1747,9 @@ int __kvm_set_memory_region(struct kvm *kvm,
if (!old || !old->npages)
return -EINVAL;

+ if (WARN_ON_ONCE(kvm->nr_memslot_pages < old->npages))
+ return -EIO;
+
memset(&new, 0, sizeof(new));
new.id = id;
new.as_id = as_id;
@@ -1756,6 +1768,13 @@ int __kvm_set_memory_region(struct kvm *kvm,

if (!old || !old->npages) {
change = KVM_MR_CREATE;
+
+ /*
+ * To simplify KVM internals, the total number of pages across
+ * all memslots must fit in an unsigned long.
+ */
+ if ((kvm->nr_memslot_pages + new.npages) < kvm->nr_memslot_pages)
+ return -EINVAL;
} else { /* Modify an existing slot. */
if ((new.userspace_addr != old->userspace_addr) ||
(new.npages != old->npages) ||


Capping total n_memslots_pages makes sense to me to avoid the (existing)
nr_mmu_pages wraparound issue, will update the next patchset version
accordingly.

Thanks,
Maciej