002c5f73c5
James Harvey reported a livelock that was introduced by commit
d012a06ab1d23 ("Revert "KVM: x86/mmu: Zap only the relevant pages when
removing a memslot"").
The livelock occurs because kvm_mmu_zap_all() as it exists today will
voluntarily reschedule and drop KVM's mmu_lock, which allows other vCPUs
to add shadow pages. With enough vCPUs, kvm_mmu_zap_all() can get stuck
in an infinite loop as it can never zap all pages before observing lock
contention or the need to reschedule. The equivalent of kvm_mmu_zap_all()
that was in use at the time of the reverted commit (4e103134b8623, "KVM:
x86/mmu: Zap only the relevant pages when removing a memslot") employed
a fast invalidate mechanism and was not susceptible to the above livelock.
There are three ways to fix the livelock:
- Reverting the revert (commit d012a06ab1d23) is not a viable option as
the revert is needed to fix a regression that occurs when the guest has
one or more assigned devices. It's unlikely we'll root cause the device
assignment regression soon enough to fix the regression timely.
- Remove the conditional reschedule from kvm_mmu_zap_all(). However, although
removing the reschedule would be a smaller code change, it's less safe
in the sense that the resulting kvm_mmu_zap_all() hasn't been used in
the wild for flushing memslots since the fast invalidate mechanism was
introduced by commit 6ca18b6950f8d ("KVM: x86: use the fast way to
invalidate all pages"), back in 2013.
- Reintroduce the fast invalidate mechanism and use it when zapping shadow
pages in response to a memslot being deleted/moved, which is what this
patch does.
For all intents and purposes, this is a revert of commit ea145aacf4ae8
("Revert "KVM: MMU: fast invalidate all pages"") and a partial revert of
commit 7390de1e99a70 ("Revert "KVM: x86: use the fast way to invalidate
all pages""), i.e. restores the behavior of commit 5304b8d37c2a5 ("KVM:
MMU: fast invalidate all pages") and commit 6ca18b6950f8d ("KVM: x86:
use the fast way to invalidate all pages") respectively.
Fixes: d012a06ab1d23 ("Revert "KVM: x86/mmu: Zap only the relevant pages when removing a memslot"")
Reported-by: James Harvey <jamespharvey20@gmail.com>
Cc: Alex Willamson <alex.williamson@redhat.com>
Cc: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <sean.j.christopherson@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.