[Patch v2 0/6] Perf kvm commands bug fix

From: Dapeng Mi
Date: Mon Aug 11 2025 - 01:57:06 EST


his patch-set fixes perf kvm commands issues, like missed memory
allocation check/free, out of range memory access and especially the
issue that fails to sample guest with "perf kvm record/top" commands on
Intel platforms.

The commit 634d36f82517 ("perf record: Just use "cycles:P" as the
default event") changes to use PEBS event to do sampling by default
including guest sampling. This breaks host to sample guest with commands
"perf kvm record/top" on Intel platforms.

Since the change "KVM: x86/pmu: Add basic support to enable guest PEBS
via DS"[1] starts, host loses the capability to sample guest with PEBS
since all PEBS related MSRs are switched to guest value after vm-entry,
like IA32_DS_AREA MSR is switched to guest GVA at vm-entry. This leads
to PEBS events can't be used to sample guest by host, otherwise no guest
PEBS records can be really sampled. The patches 5-6/6 fix this issue by
using "cycles" event instead of PEBS event "cycles:P" to sample guest on
Intel platforms.

Changes:
v1 -> v2:
* Free memory allocated by strdup().
* Check "--pfm-events" in kvm_add_default_arch_event() as well.
* Opportunistically fix the missed memory allocation and free issue in
builtin-kwork.
* Comments refine.


Tests:
* Run command "perf kvm record -a && perf kvm report" and "perf kvm
top" on Intel Sapphire Rapids platform, guest records can be
captured successfully.
* Since no powerpc platforms on hand, doesn't check the patches on
powerpc. Any test on powerpc is appreciated.

Ref:
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220411101946.20262-1-likexu@xxxxxxxxxxx/


Dapeng Mi (6):
perf tools kvm: Add missed memory allocation check and free
perf tools kwork: Add missed memory allocation check and free
perf tools kvm: Fix the potential out of range memory access issue
perf tools: Add helper x86__is_intel_cpu()
perf tools kvm: Use "cycles" to sample guest for "kvm record" on Intel
perf tools kvm: Use "cycles" to sample guest for "kvm top" on Intel

tools/perf/arch/x86/util/kvm-stat.c | 51 +++++++++++
tools/perf/builtin-kvm.c | 130 ++++++++++++++++++++--------
tools/perf/builtin-kwork.c | 27 ++++--
tools/perf/util/env.c | 22 +++++
tools/perf/util/env.h | 2 +
tools/perf/util/kvm-stat.h | 10 +++
6 files changed, 203 insertions(+), 39 deletions(-)


base-commit: 6235ce77749f45cac27f630337e2fdf04e8a6c73
--
2.34.1