Re: [PATCH 2/3] kvm: x86: do not use KVM_REQ_EVENT for APICv interrupt injection

[Paolo Bonzini]

On 28/09/2016 01:07, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 27, 2016 at 11:20:12PM +0200, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>> Since bf9f6ac8d749 ("KVM: Update Posted-Interrupts Descriptor when vCPU
>> is blocked", 2015-09-18) the posted interrupt descriptor is checked
>> unconditionally for PIR.ON.  Therefore we don't need KVM_REQ_EVENT to
>> trigger the scan and, if NMIs or SMIs are not involved, we can avoid
>> the complicated event injection path.
>>
>> However, there is a race between vmx_deliver_posted_interrupt and
>> vcpu_enter_guest.  Fix it by disabling interrupts before vcpu->mode is
>> set to IN_GUEST_MODE.
> 
> Could you describe the race a bit more please?
> I'm surprised that locally disabling irqs
> fixes a race with a different CPUs.

The posted interrupt IPI has a dummy handler in arch/x86/kernel/irq.c
(smp_kvm_posted_intr_ipi).  It only does something if it is received
while the guest is running.

So local_irq_disable has an interesting side effect.  Because the
interrupt will not be processed until the guest is entered,
local_irq_disable effectively switches the IRQ handler from the dummy
handler to the processor's posted interrupt handling.

So you want to do that before setting IN_GUEST_MODE, otherwise the IPI
sent by deliver_posted_interrupt is ignored.

However, the patch is wrong, because this bit:

        if (kvm_lapic_enabled(vcpu)) {
                /*
                 * Update architecture specific hints for APIC
                 * virtual interrupt delivery.
                 */
                if (vcpu->arch.apicv_active)
                        kvm_x86_ops->hwapic_irr_update(vcpu,
                                kvm_lapic_find_highest_irr(vcpu));
        }

also has to be moved after setting IN_GUEST_MODE.  Basically the order
for interrupt injection is:

(1)	set PIR
	smp_wmb()
(2)	set ON
	smp_mb()
(3)	read vcpu->mode
	if IN_GUEST_MODE
(4a)		send posted interrupt IPI
	else
(4b)		kick (i.e. cmpxchg vcpu->mode from IN_GUEST_MODE to
		      EXITING_GUEST_MODE and send reschedule IPI)

while the order for entering the guest must be the opposite.  The
numbers on the left identify the pairing between interrupt injection and
vcpu_entr_guest

(4a)	enable posted interrupt processing (i.e. disable interrupts!)
(3)	set vcpu->mode to IN_GUEST_MODE
	smp_mb()
(2)	read ON
	if ON then
(1)		read PIR
		sync PIR to IRR
(4b)	read vcpu->mode
	if vcpu->mode == EXITING_GUEST_MODE then
		cancel vmentry
(3/2/1)		# posted interrupts are processed on the next vmentry

Paolo