Re: [PATCH v6 08/25] KVM: arm64: iommu: Shadow host stage-2 page table

[Vincent Donnefort]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 08:29:38AM +0000, Mostafa Saleh wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 14, 2026 at 09:16:29AM +0100, Vincent Donnefort wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 13, 2026 at 06:19:24PM +0000, Mostafa Saleh wrote:
> > > 
> > > That would walk the table twice, first time with a massive map, then
> > > to unmap the pages that was just mapped, issuing TLB invalidations
> > > for all of those, also as the IOMMU page table code never frees tables
> > > that means we would immediately exahust the IOMMU pool.
> > 
> > Well the massive map is pretty quick we would mostly just allocate the PGD? And
> > then it would be just for the subsequent unmaps to split the blocks. So nothing
> > to be freed really and no risk to exhaust the pool. But if you put the calls to
> > the host_stage2_* functions that's pretty transparent.
> 
> Not for the IOMMU, everything is mapped with a leaf mapping, because

Ha Ok my bad, I didn't get that!

> the pgtable code does not support splitting blocks, this is something
> I plan to add support for in a follow up series after this one is
> merged along side other optimizations.
> 
> > 
> > Just to make sure I am clear. Here's what it could look like:
> > 
> > in iommu.c:
> > 
> > int kvm_iommu_stage2_idmap_init(struct kvm_s2_mmu *host_mmu)
> > {
> > 	u64 addr = 0;
> > 
> > 	for (i = 0; i < hyp_memblock_nr; i++) { 
> > 		kvm_iommu_stage2_idmap(addr, reg->start, IOMMU_MMIO);
> > 
> > 		addr = reg->start + reg->size;
> > 		kvm_iommu_stage2_idmap(reg->start, addr, IOMMU_READ | IOMMU_WRITE);
> > 	}
> > 
> > 	kvm_iommu_stage2_idmap(addr, kvm_phys_size(host_mmu), IOMMU_MMIO);
> > }
> > 
> > in mem_protect.c:
> > 
> > int kvm_host_prepare_stage2(void *pgt_pool_base)
> > {
> > 	...
> > 
> > 	return kvm_iommu_stage2_idmap_init(mmu);
> > 
> > 	/* 
> > 	 * From here, all the changes to the host stage-2 will be reported to
> > 	 * the iommu driver
> > 	 */
> > }
> > 
> > On the pro side: no custom walker and we really couple the iommu idmap to the
> > host stage-2 map.
> > 
> > On the con side: As you've pointed out, we'd need indeed the iommu to be ready
> > early enough.
> > 
> > If you want to stick to the snapshot function, could we have the walker to
> > first walk the hyp_memblock? the .arg could just pass if we are walking a MMIO
> > region? That would avoid that find_mem_range_from() and I believe would
> > massively simplify the snapshot walker.
> > 
> 
> I see, let me try that.
> 
> 
> Unrelated to this, but while looking into option#2 I see that
> __pkvm_guest_share_host() does not call either of the
> host_stage2_set_owner* so that requires another explicit
> pkvm_iommu_host_stage2_idmap() call.

It does! it calls __host_set_page_state_range() which calls
host_stage2_idmap_locked().

FTR, I don't really like __host_set_page_state_range(). And we removed it
recently from our Android tree. Because there's just a special case in
__host_set_page_state_range() to cover guest_share_host. So we can easily
replace all the callers with __host_update_page_state() and and call the
idmap explicitely in __pkvm_guest_share_host().

> 
> I still plan to use option#2 in v7.
> 
> Thanks,
> Mostafa
>