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-rw-r--r--Documentation/virtual/kvm/mmu.txt91
1 files changed, 83 insertions, 8 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/virtual/kvm/mmu.txt b/Documentation/virtual/kvm/mmu.txt
index 43fcb761ed16..290894176142 100644
--- a/Documentation/virtual/kvm/mmu.txt
+++ b/Documentation/virtual/kvm/mmu.txt
@@ -191,12 +191,12 @@ Shadow pages contain the following information:
A counter keeping track of how many hardware registers (guest cr3 or
pdptrs) are now pointing at the page. While this counter is nonzero, the
page cannot be destroyed. See role.invalid.
- multimapped:
- Whether there exist multiple sptes pointing at this page.
- parent_pte/parent_ptes:
- If multimapped is zero, parent_pte points at the single spte that points at
- this page's spt. Otherwise, parent_ptes points at a data structure
- with a list of parent_ptes.
+ parent_ptes:
+ The reverse mapping for the pte/ptes pointing at this page's spt. If
+ parent_ptes bit 0 is zero, only one spte points at this pages and
+ parent_ptes points at this single spte, otherwise, there exists multiple
+ sptes pointing at this page and (parent_ptes & ~0x1) points at a data
+ structure with a list of parent_ptes.
unsync:
If true, then the translations in this page may not match the guest's
translation. This is equivalent to the state of the tlb when a pte is
@@ -210,6 +210,24 @@ Shadow pages contain the following information:
A bitmap indicating which sptes in spt point (directly or indirectly) at
pages that may be unsynchronized. Used to quickly locate all unsychronized
pages reachable from a given page.
+ mmu_valid_gen:
+ Generation number of the page. It is compared with kvm->arch.mmu_valid_gen
+ during hash table lookup, and used to skip invalidated shadow pages (see
+ "Zapping all pages" below.)
+ clear_spte_count:
+ Only present on 32-bit hosts, where a 64-bit spte cannot be written
+ atomically. The reader uses this while running out of the MMU lock
+ to detect in-progress updates and retry them until the writer has
+ finished the write.
+ write_flooding_count:
+ A guest may write to a page table many times, causing a lot of
+ emulations if the page needs to be write-protected (see "Synchronized
+ and unsynchronized pages" below). Leaf pages can be unsynchronized
+ so that they do not trigger frequent emulation, but this is not
+ possible for non-leafs. This field counts the number of emulations
+ since the last time the page table was actually used; if emulation
+ is triggered too frequently on this page, KVM will unmap the page
+ to avoid emulation in the future.
Reverse map
===========
@@ -258,14 +276,26 @@ This is the most complicated event. The cause of a page fault can be:
Handling a page fault is performed as follows:
+ - if the RSV bit of the error code is set, the page fault is caused by guest
+ accessing MMIO and cached MMIO information is available.
+ - walk shadow page table
+ - check for valid generation number in the spte (see "Fast invalidation of
+ MMIO sptes" below)
+ - cache the information to vcpu->arch.mmio_gva, vcpu->arch.access and
+ vcpu->arch.mmio_gfn, and call the emulator
+ - If both P bit and R/W bit of error code are set, this could possibly
+ be handled as a "fast page fault" (fixed without taking the MMU lock). See
+ the description in Documentation/virtual/kvm/locking.txt.
- if needed, walk the guest page tables to determine the guest translation
(gva->gpa or ngpa->gpa)
- if permissions are insufficient, reflect the fault back to the guest
- determine the host page
- - if this is an mmio request, there is no host page; call the emulator
- to emulate the instruction instead
+ - if this is an mmio request, there is no host page; cache the info to
+ vcpu->arch.mmio_gva, vcpu->arch.access and vcpu->arch.mmio_gfn
- walk the shadow page table to find the spte for the translation,
instantiating missing intermediate page tables as necessary
+ - If this is an mmio request, cache the mmio info to the spte and set some
+ reserved bit on the spte (see callers of kvm_mmu_set_mmio_spte_mask)
- try to unsynchronize the page
- if successful, we can let the guest continue and modify the gpte
- emulate the instruction
@@ -351,6 +381,51 @@ causes its write_count to be incremented, thus preventing instantiation of
a large spte. The frames at the end of an unaligned memory slot have
artificially inflated ->write_counts so they can never be instantiated.
+Zapping all pages (page generation count)
+=========================================
+
+For the large memory guests, walking and zapping all pages is really slow
+(because there are a lot of pages), and also blocks memory accesses of
+all VCPUs because it needs to hold the MMU lock.
+
+To make it be more scalable, kvm maintains a global generation number
+which is stored in kvm->arch.mmu_valid_gen. Every shadow page stores
+the current global generation-number into sp->mmu_valid_gen when it
+is created. Pages with a mismatching generation number are "obsolete".
+
+When KVM need zap all shadow pages sptes, it just simply increases the global
+generation-number then reload root shadow pages on all vcpus. As the VCPUs
+create new shadow page tables, the old pages are not used because of the
+mismatching generation number.
+
+KVM then walks through all pages and zaps obsolete pages. While the zap
+operation needs to take the MMU lock, the lock can be released periodically
+so that the VCPUs can make progress.
+
+Fast invalidation of MMIO sptes
+===============================
+
+As mentioned in "Reaction to events" above, kvm will cache MMIO
+information in leaf sptes. When a new memslot is added or an existing
+memslot is changed, this information may become stale and needs to be
+invalidated. This also needs to hold the MMU lock while walking all
+shadow pages, and is made more scalable with a similar technique.
+
+MMIO sptes have a few spare bits, which are used to store a
+generation number. The global generation number is stored in
+kvm_memslots(kvm)->generation, and increased whenever guest memory info
+changes. This generation number is distinct from the one described in
+the previous section.
+
+When KVM finds an MMIO spte, it checks the generation number of the spte.
+If the generation number of the spte does not equal the global generation
+number, it will ignore the cached MMIO information and handle the page
+fault through the slow path.
+
+Since only 19 bits are used to store generation-number on mmio spte, all
+pages are zapped when there is an overflow.
+
+
Further reading
===============