Re: [PATCH] kvm: rework remove-write-access for a slot

From: Avi Kivity
Date: Wed Jun 02 2010 - 07:18:34 EST


On 06/02/2010 11:53 AM, Lai Jiangshan wrote:
Current code uses slot_bitmap to find ptes who map a page
from the memory slot, it is not precise: some ptes in the shadow page
are not map any page from the memory slot.

This patch uses rmap to find the ptes precisely, and remove
the unused slot_bitmap.


Patch looks good; a couple of comments:

- We might see a slowdown with !tdp, since we no longer have locality. Each page will map to an spte in a different page. However, it's still worth it in my opinion.
- I thought of a different approach to write protection: write protect the L4 sptes, on write fault add write permission to the L4 spte and write protect the L3 sptes that it points to, etc. This method can use the slot bitmap to reduce the number of write faults. However we can reintroduce the slot bitmap if/when we use the method, this shouldn't block the patch.


+static void rmapp_remove_write_access(struct kvm *kvm, unsigned long *rmapp)
+{
+ u64 *spte = rmap_next(kvm, rmapp, NULL);
+
+ while (spte) {
+ /* avoid RMW */
+ if (is_writable_pte(*spte))
+ *spte &= ~PT_WRITABLE_MASK;

Must use an atomic operation here to avoid losing dirty or accessed bit.

+ spte = rmap_next(kvm, rmapp, spte);
+ }
+}


--
error compiling committee.c: too many arguments to function

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