[PATCH] KVM: x86/xen: improve accuracy of Xen timers

From: David Woodhouse
Date: Mon Oct 30 2023 - 11:50:58 EST

From: David Woodhouse <dwmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

A test program such as http://david.woodhou.se/timerlat.c confirms user
reports that timers are increasingly inaccurate as the lifetime of a
guest increases. Reporting the actual delay observed when asking for
100µs of sleep, it starts off OK on a newly-launched guest but gets
worse over time, giving incorrect sleep times:

root@ip-10-0-193-21:~# ./timerlat -c -n 5
00000000 latency 103243/100000 (3.2430%)
00000001 latency 103243/100000 (3.2430%)
00000002 latency 103242/100000 (3.2420%)
00000003 latency 103245/100000 (3.2450%)
00000004 latency 103245/100000 (3.2450%)

The biggest problem is that get_kvmclock_ns() returns inaccurate values
when the guest TSC is scaled. The guest sees a TSC value scaled from the
host TSC by a mul/shift conversion (hopefully done in hardware). The
guest then converts that guest TSC value into nanoseconds using the
mul/shift conversion given to it by the KVM pvclock information.

But get_kvmclock_ns() performs only a single conversion directly from
host TSC to nanoseconds, giving a different result. A test program at
http://david.woodhou.se/tsdrift.c demonstrates the cumulative error
over a day.

It's non-trivial to fix get_kvmclock_ns(), although I'll come back to
that. The actual guest hv_clock is per-CPU, and *theoretically* each
vCPU could be running at a *different* frequency. But this patch is
needed anyway because...

The other issue with Xen timers was that the code would snapshot the
host CLOCK_MONOTONIC at some point in time, and then... after a few
interrupts may have occurred, some preemption perhaps... would also read
the guest's kvmclock. Then it would proceed under the false assumption
that those two happened at the *same* time. Any time which *actually*
elapsed between reading the two clocks was introduced as inaccuracies
in the time at which the timer fired.

Fix it to use a variant of kvm_get_time_and_clockread(), which reads the
host TSC just *once*, then use the returned TSC value to calculate the
kvmclock (making sure to do that the way the guest would instead of
making the same mistake get_kvmclock_ns() does).

Sadly, hrtimers based on CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW are not supported, so Xen
timers still have to use CLOCK_MONOTONIC. In practice the difference
between the two won't matter over the timescales involved, as the
*absolute* values don't matter; just the delta.

This does mean a new variant of kvm_get_time_and_clockread() is needed;
called kvm_get_monotonic_and_clockread() because that's what it does.

Signed-off-by: David Woodhouse <dwmw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
---
arch/x86/kvm/x86.c | 30 ++++++++++++
arch/x86/kvm/x86.h | 1 +
arch/x86/kvm/xen.c | 111 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------
3 files changed, 109 insertions(+), 33 deletions(-)

diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
index 41cce5031126..aeede83d65dc 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
@@ -2863,6 +2863,25 @@ static int do_monotonic_raw(s64 *t, u64 *tsc_timestamp)
return mode;
}

+static int do_monotonic(s64 *t, u64 *tsc_timestamp)
+{
+ struct pvclock_gtod_data *gtod = &pvclock_gtod_data;
+ unsigned long seq;
+ int mode;
+ u64 ns;
+
+ do {
+ seq = read_seqcount_begin(&gtod->seq);
+ ns = gtod->clock.base_cycles;
+ ns += vgettsc(&gtod->clock, tsc_timestamp, &mode);
+ ns >>= gtod->clock.shift;
+ ns += ktime_to_ns(ktime_add(gtod->clock.offset, gtod->offs_boot));
+ } while (unlikely(read_seqcount_retry(&gtod->seq, seq)));
+ *t = ns;
+
+ return mode;
+}
+
static int do_realtime(struct timespec64 *ts, u64 *tsc_timestamp)
{
struct pvclock_gtod_data *gtod = &pvclock_gtod_data;
@@ -2895,6 +2914,17 @@ static bool kvm_get_time_and_clockread(s64 *kernel_ns, u64 *tsc_timestamp)
tsc_timestamp));
}

+/* returns true if host is using TSC based clocksource */
+bool kvm_get_monotonic_and_clockread(s64 *kernel_ns, u64 *tsc_timestamp)
+{
+ /* checked again under seqlock below */
+ if (!gtod_is_based_on_tsc(pvclock_gtod_data.clock.vclock_mode))
+ return false;
+
+ return gtod_is_based_on_tsc(do_monotonic(kernel_ns,
+ tsc_timestamp));
+}
+
/* returns true if host is using TSC based clocksource */
static bool kvm_get_walltime_and_clockread(struct timespec64 *ts,
u64 *tsc_timestamp)
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.h b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.h
index 1e7be1f6ab29..c08c6f729965 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.h
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.h
@@ -293,6 +293,7 @@ static inline bool kvm_check_has_quirk(struct kvm *kvm, u64 quirk)
void kvm_inject_realmode_interrupt(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, int irq, int inc_eip);

u64 get_kvmclock_ns(struct kvm *kvm);
+bool kvm_get_monotonic_and_clockread(s64 *kernel_ns, u64 *tsc_timestamp);

int kvm_read_guest_virt(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu,
gva_t addr, void *val, unsigned int bytes,
diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/xen.c b/arch/x86/kvm/xen.c
index 0ea6016ad132..00a1e924a717 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/xen.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/xen.c
@@ -24,6 +24,7 @@
#include <xen/interface/sched.h>

#include <asm/xen/cpuid.h>
+#include <asm/pvclock.h>

#include "cpuid.h"
#include "trace.h"
@@ -144,17 +145,87 @@ static enum hrtimer_restart xen_timer_callback(struct hrtimer *timer)
return HRTIMER_NORESTART;
}

-static void kvm_xen_start_timer(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, u64 guest_abs, s64 delta_ns)
+static void kvm_xen_start_timer(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, u64 guest_abs,
+ bool linux_wa)
{
+ uint64_t guest_now;
+ int64_t kernel_now, delta;
+
+ /*
+ * The guest provides the requested timeout in absolute nanoseconds
+ * of the KVM clock — as *it* sees it, based on the scaled TSC and
+ * the pvclock information provided by KVM.
+ *
+ * The kernel doesn't support hrtimers based on CLOCK_MONOTONIC_RAW
+ * so use CLOCK_MONOTONIC. In the timescales covered by timers, the
+ * difference won't matter much as there is no cumulative effect.
+ *
+ * Calculate the time for some arbitrary point in time around "now"
+ * in terms of both kvmclock and CLOCK_MONOTONIC. Calculate the
+ * delta between the kvmclock "now" value and the guest's requested
+ * timeout, apply the "Linux workaround" described below, and add
+ * the resulting delta to the CLOCK_MONOTONIC "now" value, to get
+ * the absolute CLOCK_MONOTONIC time at which the timer should
+ * fire.
+ */
+ if (vcpu->kvm->arch.use_master_clock &&
+ static_cpu_has(X86_FEATURE_CONSTANT_TSC)) {
+ uint64_t host_tsc, guest_tsc;
+
+ if (!IS_ENABLED(CONFIG_64BIT) ||
+ !kvm_get_monotonic_and_clockread(&kernel_now, &host_tsc)) {
+ /*
+ * Don't fall back to get_kvmclock_ns() because it's
+ * broken; it has a systemic error in its results
+ * because it scales directly from host TSC to
+ * nanoseconds, and doesn't scale first to guest TSC
+ * and then* to nanoseconds as the guest does.
+ *
+ * There is a small error introduced here because time
+ * continues to elapse between the ktime_get() and the
+ * subsequent rdtsc(). But not the systemic drift due
+ * to get_kvmclock_ns().
+ */
+ kernel_now = ktime_get(); /* This is CLOCK_MONOTONIC */
+ host_tsc = rdtsc();
+ }
+
+ /* Calculate the guest kvmclock as the guest would do it. */
+ guest_tsc = kvm_read_l1_tsc(vcpu, host_tsc);
+ guest_now = __pvclock_read_cycles(&vcpu->arch.hv_clock, guest_tsc);
+ } else {
+ /* Without CONSTANT_TSC, get_kvmclock_ns() is the only option */
+ guest_now = get_kvmclock_ns(vcpu->kvm);
+ kernel_now = ktime_get();
+ }
+
+ delta = guest_abs - guest_now;
+
+ /* Xen has a 'Linux workaround' in do_set_timer_op() which
+ * checks for negative absolute timeout values (caused by
+ * integer overflow), and for values about 13 days in the
+ * future (2^50ns) which would be caused by jiffies
+ * overflow. For those cases, it sets the timeout 100ms in
+ * the future (not *too* soon, since if a guest really did
+ * set a long timeout on purpose we don't want to keep
+ * churning CPU time by waking it up).
+ */
+ if (linux_wa) {
+ if ((unlikely((int64_t)guest_abs < 0 ||
+ (delta > 0 && (uint32_t) (delta >> 50) != 0)))) {
+ delta = 100 * NSEC_PER_MSEC;
+ guest_abs = guest_now + delta;
+ }
+ }
+
atomic_set(&vcpu->arch.xen.timer_pending, 0);
vcpu->arch.xen.timer_expires = guest_abs;

- if (delta_ns <= 0) {
+ if (delta <= 0) {
xen_timer_callback(&vcpu->arch.xen.timer);
} else {
- ktime_t ktime_now = ktime_get();
hrtimer_start(&vcpu->arch.xen.timer,
- ktime_add_ns(ktime_now, delta_ns),
+ ktime_add_ns(kernel_now, delta),
HRTIMER_MODE_ABS_HARD);
}
}
@@ -923,8 +994,7 @@ int kvm_xen_vcpu_set_attr(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, struct kvm_xen_vcpu_attr *data)
/* Start the timer if the new value has a valid vector+expiry. */
if (data->u.timer.port && data->u.timer.expires_ns)
kvm_xen_start_timer(vcpu, data->u.timer.expires_ns,
- data->u.timer.expires_ns -
- get_kvmclock_ns(vcpu->kvm));
+ false);

r = 0;
break;
@@ -1340,7 +1410,6 @@ static bool kvm_xen_hcall_vcpu_op(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, bool longmode, int cmd,
{
struct vcpu_set_singleshot_timer oneshot;
struct x86_exception e;
- s64 delta;

if (!kvm_xen_timer_enabled(vcpu))
return false;
@@ -1374,13 +1443,7 @@ static bool kvm_xen_hcall_vcpu_op(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, bool longmode, int cmd,
return true;
}

- delta = oneshot.timeout_abs_ns - get_kvmclock_ns(vcpu->kvm);
- if ((oneshot.flags & VCPU_SSHOTTMR_future) && delta < 0) {
- *r = -ETIME;
- return true;
- }
-
- kvm_xen_start_timer(vcpu, oneshot.timeout_abs_ns, delta);
+ kvm_xen_start_timer(vcpu, oneshot.timeout_abs_ns, false);
*r = 0;
return true;

@@ -1404,25 +1467,7 @@ static bool kvm_xen_hcall_set_timer_op(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu, uint64_t timeout,
return false;

if (timeout) {
- uint64_t guest_now = get_kvmclock_ns(vcpu->kvm);
- int64_t delta = timeout - guest_now;
-
- /* Xen has a 'Linux workaround' in do_set_timer_op() which
- * checks for negative absolute timeout values (caused by
- * integer overflow), and for values about 13 days in the
- * future (2^50ns) which would be caused by jiffies
- * overflow. For those cases, it sets the timeout 100ms in
- * the future (not *too* soon, since if a guest really did
- * set a long timeout on purpose we don't want to keep
- * churning CPU time by waking it up).
- */
- if (unlikely((int64_t)timeout < 0 ||
- (delta > 0 && (uint32_t) (delta >> 50) != 0))) {
- delta = 100 * NSEC_PER_MSEC;
- timeout = guest_now + delta;
- }
-
- kvm_xen_start_timer(vcpu, timeout, delta);
+ kvm_xen_start_timer(vcpu, timeout, true);
} else {
kvm_xen_stop_timer(vcpu);
}
--
2.41.0


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