Re: [RFC PATCH 00/12] KVM: MMU: locklessly wirte-protect

[Gleb Natapov]

On Sat, Aug 03, 2013 at 02:09:43PM +0900, Takuya Yoshikawa wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jul 2013 21:01:58 +0800
> Xiao Guangrong <xiaoguangrong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> > Background
> > ==========
> > Currently, when mark memslot dirty logged or get dirty page, we need to
> > write-protect large guest memory, it is the heavy work, especially, we need to
> > hold mmu-lock which is also required by vcpu to fix its page table fault and
> > mmu-notifier when host page is being changed. In the extreme cpu / memory used
> > guest, it becomes a scalability issue.
> > 
> > This patchset introduces a way to locklessly write-protect guest memory.
> 
> Nice improvements!
> 
> If I read the patch set correctly, this work contains the following changes:
> 
> Cleanups:
>         Patch 1 and patch 12.
> 
Yes, do not see the reason to not apply 1 straightaway. 12 depends on
other patches though.

> Lazy large page dropping for dirty logging:
>         Patch 2-3.
>         Patch 2 is preparatory to patch 3.
> 
>         This does not look like an RFC if you address Marcelo's comment.
>         Any reason to include this in an RFC patch set?
Agree, you can post them separately for faster inclusion.

> 
> Making remote TLBs flushable outside of mmu_lock for dirty logging:
>         Patch 6.
> 
>         This is nice.  I'm locally using a similar patch for my work, but yours
>         is much cleaner and better.  I hope this will get merged soon.
> 
But without other patches this patch itself doesn't do much, no?

> New Pte-list handling:
>         Patch 7-9.
> 
>         Still reading the details.
> 
> RCU-based lockless write protection.
>         Patch 10-11.
> 
>         If I understand RCU correctly, the current implementation has a problem:
>         read-side critical sections can become too long.
> 
>         See the following LWN's article:
>         "Sleepable RCU"
>         https://lwn.net/Articles/202847/
> 
>         Especially, kvm_mmu_slot_remove_write_access() can take hundreds of
>         milliseconds, or even a few seconds for guests using shadow paging.
>         Is it possible to break the read-side critical section after protecting
>         some pages? -- I guess so.
> 
> Anyway, I want to see the following non-RFC quality patches get merged first:
>         - Lazy large page dropping for dirty logging:
>         - Making remote TLBs flushable outside of mmu_lock for dirty logging
> 
> As you are doing in patch 11, the latter can eliminate the TLB flushes before
> cond_resched_lock().  So this alone is an optimization, and since my work is
> based on this TLB flush-less lock breaking, I would appriciate if you make this
> change first in your clean way.
> 
> The remaining patches, pte-list refactoring and lock-less ones, also look
> interesting, but I need to read more to understand them.
> 
> Thanks for the nice work!
Indeed. FWIW I completed the review and am waiting for a new version.

--
			Gleb.
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