KVM guest sometimes failed to boot because of kernel stack overflow if KPTI is enabled on a hisilicon ARM64 platform.

From: Wei Xu
Date: Wed Jun 20 2018 - 10:18:31 EST


Hi All,

We have observed KVM guest sometimes failed to boot because of kernel stack
overflow if KPTI is enabled on a hisilicon arm64 platform.

We also tested with different kernel version and found it is only
happened if the KPTI and KVM(enable-kvm & cpu=host) are enabled on the guest.
The detail result is as below table.

+---------+----------+--------+------------+-------------------+
| host |host KPTI | guest | guest KPTI | kvm guest |
| kernel |enabled | kernel | enabled | booting result |
+---------+----------+--------+------------+-------------------+
| 4.17 | Y | 4.17 | Y | stack overflow |
+---------+----------+--------+------------+-------------------+
| 4.17 | Y | 4.16 | NA | OK |
+---------+----------+--------+------------+-------------------+
| 4.16 | NA | 4.17 | Y | stack overflow |
+---------+----------+--------+------------+-------------------+
| 4.16 | NA | 4.16 | NA | OK |
+---------+----------+--------+------------+-------------------+

A simple walk-around is adding this platform into the "kpti_safe_list".
But it does not resolve the issue indeed.
Could you please share any hint how to resolve this kind issue?
Thanks!

Another issue we found is "kpti_install_ng_mappings" will be invoked
even "kpti=off" has been added in the kernel command line. Is that expected?
This is because "kpti" is not a *early* param that "init_cpu_features" will
be invoked before parsing the param.

The command we are using to run the guest is as:

./qemu-system-aarch64 -machine virt,kernel_irqchip=on,gic-version=3 -cpu host
-enable-kvm -smp 1 -m 1024 -kernel ./Image -initrd ../mini-rootfs-arm64.cpio.gz
-nographic -append "rdinit=init console=ttyAMA0 earlycon=pl011,0x9000000"

The log is as below:

[ 0.000000] Booting Linux on physical CPU 0x0000000000 [0x480fd010]
[ 0.000000] Linux version 4.17.0-45864-g29dcea8-dirty (joyx@Turing-Arch-b) (gcc version 4.9.1 20140505 (prerelease) (crosstool-NG linaro-1.13.1-4.9-2014.05 - Linaro GCC 4.9-2014.05)) #6 SMP PREEMPT Fri Jun 15 21:39:52 CST 2018
[ 0.000000] Machine model: linux,dummy-virt
[ 0.000000] earlycon: pl11 at MMIO 0x0000000009000000 (options '')
[ 0.000000] bootconsole [pl11] enabled
[ 0.000000] efi: Getting EFI parameters from FDT:
[ 0.000000] efi: UEFI not found.
[ 0.000000] cma: Reserved 16 MiB at 0x000000007f000000
[ 0.000000] NUMA: No NUMA configuration found
[ 0.000000] NUMA: Faking a node at [mem 0x0000000000000000-0x000000007fffffff]
[ 0.000000] NUMA: NODE_DATA [mem 0x7efeb300-0x7efecdff]
[ 0.000000] Zone ranges:
[ 0.000000] DMA32 [mem 0x0000000040000000-0x000000007fffffff]
[ 0.000000] Normal empty
[ 0.000000] Movable zone start for each node
[ 0.000000] Early memory node ranges
[ 0.000000] node 0: [mem 0x0000000040000000-0x000000007fffffff]
[ 0.000000] Initmem setup node 0 [mem 0x0000000040000000-0x000000007fffffff]
[ 0.000000] psci: probing for conduit method from DT.
[ 0.000000] psci: PSCIv1.0 detected in firmware.
[ 0.000000] psci: Using standard PSCI v0.2 function IDs
[ 0.000000] psci: Trusted OS migration not required
[ 0.000000] psci: SMC Calling Convention v1.1
[ 0.000000] random: get_random_bytes called from start_kernel+0xa8/0x418 with crng_init=0
[ 0.000000] percpu: Embedded 24 pages/cpu @ (ptrval) s57984 r8192 d32128 u98304
[ 0.000000] Detected VIPT I-cache on CPU0
[ 0.000000] CPU features: detected: Kernel page table isolation (KPTI)
[ 0.000000] CPU features: detected: Hardware dirty bit management
[ 0.000000] Built 1 zonelists, mobility grouping on. Total pages: 258048
[ 0.000000] Policy zone: DMA32
[ 0.000000] Kernel command line: rdinit=init console=ttyAMA0 earlycon=pl011,0x9000000
[ 0.000000] Memory: 968436K/1048576K available (10044K kernel code, 1328K rwdata, 4840K rodata, 1216K init, 409K bss, 63756K reserved, 16384K cma-reserved)
[ 0.000000] SLUB: HWalign=64, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
[ 0.000000] Preemptible hierarchical RCU implementation.
[ 0.000000] RCU restricting CPUs from NR_CPUS=128 to nr_cpu_ids=1.
[ 0.000000] Tasks RCU enabled.
[ 0.000000] RCU: Adjusting geometry for rcu_fanout_leaf=16, nr_cpu_ids=1
[ 0.000000] NR_IRQS: 64, nr_irqs: 64, preallocated irqs: 0
[ 0.000000] GICv3: Distributor has no Range Selector support
[ 0.000000] GICv3: no VLPI support, no direct LPI support
[ 0.000000] ITS [mem 0x08080000-0x0809ffff]
[ 0.000000] ITS@0x0000000008080000: allocated 8192 Devices @7d830000 (indirect, esz 8, psz 64K, shr 1)
[ 0.000000] ITS@0x0000000008080000: allocated 8192 Interrupt Collections @7d840000 (flat, esz 8, psz 64K, shr 1)
[ 0.000000] GIC: using LPI property table @0x000000007d850000
[ 0.000000] ITS: Allocated 1792 chunks for LPIs
[ 0.000000] GICv3: CPU0: found redistributor 0 region 0:0x00000000080a0000
[ 0.000000] CPU0: using LPI pending table @0x000000007d860000
[ 0.000000] GIC: PPI11 is secure or misconfigured
[ 0.000000] arch_timer: WARNING: Invalid trigger for IRQ3, assuming level low
[ 0.000000] arch_timer: WARNING: Please fix your firmware
[ 0.000000] arch_timer: cp15 timer(s) running at 100.00MHz (virt).
[ 0.000000] clocksource: arch_sys_counter: mask: 0xffffffffffffff max_cycles: 0x171024e7e0, max_idle_ns: 440795205315 ns
[ 0.000001] sched_clock: 56 bits at 100MHz, resolution 10ns, wraps every 4398046511100ns
[ 0.000854] Console: colour dummy device 80x25
[ 0.001423] Calibrating delay loop (skipped), value calculated using timer frequency.. 200.00 BogoMIPS (lpj=400000)
[ 0.002478] pid_max: default: 32768 minimum: 301
[ 0.002962] Security Framework initialized
[ 0.003541] Dentry cache hash table entries: 131072 (order: 8, 1048576 bytes)
[ 0.004347] Inode-cache hash table entries: 65536 (order: 7, 524288 bytes)
[ 0.005058] Mount-cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
[ 0.005844] Mountpoint-cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
[ 0.025949] ASID allocator initialised with 32768 entries
[ 0.029958] Hierarchical SRCU implementation.
[ 0.034328] Platform MSI: its domain created
[ 0.034787] PCI/MSI: /intc/its domain created
[ 0.035359] EFI services will not be available.
[ 0.037987] smp: Bringing up secondary CPUs ...
[ 0.038454] smp: Brought up 1 node, 1 CPU
[ 0.038859] SMP: Total of 1 processors activated.
[ 0.039338] CPU features: detected: GIC system register CPU interface
[ 0.039988] CPU features: detected: Privileged Access Never
[ 0.040560] CPU features: detected: User Access Override
[ 0.041093] CPU features: detected: RAS Extension Support
[ 0.042947] Insufficient stack space to handle exception!
[ 0.042949] ESR: 0x96000046 -- DABT (current EL)
[ 0.043963] FAR: 0xffff0000093a80e0
[ 0.045794] Task stack: [0xffff0000093a8000..0xffff0000093ac000]
[ 0.052181] IRQ stack: [0xffff000008000000..0xffff000008004000]
[ 0.058572] Overflow stack: [0xffff80003efce2f0..0xffff80003efcf2f0]
[ 0.065068] CPU: 0 PID: 12 Comm: migration/0 Not tainted 4.17.0-45864-g29dcea8-dirty #6
[ 0.073138] Hardware name: linux,dummy-virt (DT)
[ 0.077831] pstate: 604003c5 (nZCv DAIF +PAN -UAO)
[ 0.082661] pc : el1_sync+0x0/0xb0
[ 0.086152] lr : kpti_install_ng_mappings+0x120/0x214
[ 0.091219] sp : ffff0000093a80e0
[ 0.094589] x29: ffff0000093abce0 x28: ffff000008ea9000
[ 0.100004] x27: ffff000008ea9000 x26: ffff0000091f7000
[ 0.105424] x25: ffff00000906d000 x24: ffff000009191000
[ 0.110733] x23: ffff000008ea9000 x22: 0000000041190000
[ 0.116148] x21: ffff0000091f7000 x20: 0000000000000000
[ 0.121564] x19: ffff000009190000 x18: 000000003455d99d
[ 0.126977] x17: 0000000000000001 x16: 00f8000040ffff13
[ 0.132288] x15: 000000007eff6000 x14: 000000007eff6000
[ 0.137704] x13: 00f800007fe00f11 x12: 000000007eff8000
[ 0.143013] x11: 000000007eff8000 x10: 0000000000000000
[ 0.148426] x9 : 000000007eff9000 x8 : 000000007eff9000
[ 0.153841] x7 : 0000000000000000 x6 : 00000000411f8000
[ 0.159154] x5 : 00000000411f8000 x4 : 0000000040a443d4
[ 0.164567] x3 : 00000000411f7000 x2 : 00000000411f7000
[ 0.169981] x1 : ffff00000906d7b0 x0 : ffff80003da61c00
[ 0.175395] Kernel panic - not syncing: kernel stack overflow
[ 0.181178] CPU: 0 PID: 12 Comm: migration/0 Not tainted 4.17.0-45864-g29dcea8-dirty #6
[ 0.189248] Hardware name: linux,dummy-virt (DT)
[ 0.193945] Call trace:
[ 0.196470] dump_backtrace+0x0/0x180
[ 0.200201] show_stack+0x14/0x1c
[ 0.203574] dump_stack+0x90/0xb0
[ 0.206946] panic+0x138/0x2a0
[ 0.210075] __stack_chk_fail+0x0/0x18
[ 0.213922] handle_bad_stack+0x118/0x124
[ 0.218012] __bad_stack+0x88/0x8c
[ 0.221393] el1_sync+0x0/0xb0
[ 0.224520] Unable to handle kernel paging request at virtual address ffff0000093abce0
[ 0.232586] Mem abort info:
[ 0.235362] ESR = 0x96000006
[ 0.238488] Exception class = DABT (current EL), IL = 32 bits
[ 0.244506] SET = 0, FnV = 0
[ 0.247632] EA = 0, S1PTW = 0
[ 0.250873] Data abort info:
[ 0.253765] ISV = 0, ISS = 0x00000006
[ 0.257725] CM = 0, WnR = 0
[ 0.260735] swapper pgtable: 4k pages, 48-bit VAs, pgdp = (ptrval)


Best Regards,
Wei