Re: [PATCH v2 6/6] KVM: nVMX: optimize prepare_vmcs02{,_full} for Enlightened VMCS case

From: Paolo Bonzini
Date: Wed Jul 25 2018 - 08:14:59 EST


On 25/07/2018 10:37, Vitaly Kuznetsov wrote:
>> Why is this needed? If it weren't for it, you could pass hv_evmcs
>> directly to evmcs_needs_write, which would simplify the code a bit in
>> the caller.
> This is an equivalent of prepare_vmcs02()/prepare_vmcs02_full() split
> for eVMCS case: when we switch from L2 guest A to L2 guest B we need to
> write the whole VMCS so evmcs_needs_write() needs to return true.

Right, I missed the dirty_vmcs12 assignment in patch 5.

But is L0 allowed to write to hv_clean_fields? One possibility is to
add a dirty_evmcs field to struct nested_vmx, and "OR" ~hv_clean_fields
into it at the beginning of prepare_vmcs02.

Something like

if (vmx->nested.hv_evmcs) {
vmx->nested.dirty_evmcs |=
~vmx->nested.hv_evmcs->hv_clean_fields;
prepare_vmcs02_full(vcpu, vmcs12,
vmx->nested.dirty_evmcs);
} else if (vmx->nested.dirty_vmcs12) {
prepare_vmcs02_full(vcpu, vmcs12, ~0);
}

...
vmx->nested.dirty_evmcs = 0;
vmx->nested.dirty_vmcs12 = false;

?

Paolo

> We can, however, make an optimisation: forcefuly reset hv_clean_fields
> mask on enlightened vmptrld making 'dirty_vmcs12' check redundant.