[SeaBIOS] [PATCH RFC] x86: use volatile asm for read/write{b, w, l} implementations

Laszlo Ersek lersek at redhat.com
Thu Jan 4 14:41:05 CET 2018


On 01/04/18 11:24, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
> Laszlo Ersek <lersek at redhat.com> writes:
> 
>> Is it possible that the current barrier() is not sufficient for the
>> intended purpose in an L2 guest?
>>
>> What happens if you drop your current patch, but replace
>>
>>   __asm__ __volatile__("": : :"memory")
>>
>> in the barrier() macro definition, with a real, heavy-weight barrier,
>> such as
>>
>>   __asm__ __volatile__("mfence": : :"memory")
>>
>> (See mb() in "arch/x86/include/asm/barrier.h" in the kernel.)
>>
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion,
> 
> unfortunately, it doesn't change anything :-(
> 
>> ... I think running in L2 could play a role here; see
>> "Documentation/memory-barriers.txt", section "VIRTUAL MACHINE GUESTS";
>> from kernel commit 6a65d26385bf ("asm-generic: implement virt_xxx memory
>> barriers", 2016-01-12).
>>
>> See also the commit message.
>>
> 
> I see, thank you.
> 
> It seems, however, that the issue here is not about barriers: first of
> all it is 100% reproducible and second, surrounding '*(volatile u32
> *)addr = val' with all sorts of barriers doesn't help. I *think* this is
> some sort of a mis-assumption about this memory which is handled with
> vmexits so both L0 and L1 hypervisors are getting involved. More
> debugging ...

* Do you see the issue with both legacy-only (0.9.5) and modern-only
(1.0) virtio devices?

Asking about this because legacy and modern virtio devices use registers
in different address spaces (IO vs. MMIO).

* Does it make a difference if you disable EPT in the L1 KVM
configuration? (EPT is probably primarily controlled by the CPU features
exposed by L0 Hyper-V, and secondarily by the "ept" parameter of the
"kvm_intel" module in L1.)

Asking about EPT because the virtio rings and descriptors are in RAM,
accessing which in L2 should "normally" never trap to L1/L0. However (I
*guess*), when those pages are accessed for the very first time in L2,
they likely do trap, and then the EPT setting in L1 might make a difference.

* Somewhat relatedly, can you try launching QEMU in L1 with "-realtime
mlock=on"?

(Anyone please correct me if my ideas are bogus.)

Thanks
Laszlo



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