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Re: [Xen-devel] [XenSummit 2017] Notes from the 5-level-paging session
On 7/20/2017 7:24 PM, Andrew Cooper wrote:
On 20/07/17 11:36, Yu Zhang wrote:
On 7/20/2017 6:42 PM, Andrew Cooper wrote:
On 20/07/17 11:10, Yu Zhang wrote:
On 7/17/2017 6:53 PM, Juergen Gross wrote:
Hey,
I took a few notes at the 5-level-paging session at the summit.
I hope there isn't any major stuff missing...
Participants (at least naming the active ones): Andrew Cooper,
Jan Beulich, Yu Zhang and myself (the list is just from my memory).
The following topics have been discussed in the session:
1. Do we need support for 5-level-paging PV guests?
There is no urgent need for 5-level-paging PV guests for the
following reasons:
- Guests >64TB (which is the upper limit for 4-level-paging Linux)
can be PVH or HVM.
- A 5-level-paging host supports up to 4 PB physical memory. A
4-level-paging PV-Dom0 can support that theoretically: the M2P map
for 4 PB memory needs 8 TB space, which just fits into the
hypervisor
reserved memory area in the Linux kernel. Any other hypervisor
data
and/or code can live in the additionally available virtual
space of
the 5-level-paging mode.
There was agreement we don't need support of 5-level-paging PV guests
right now. There is a need, however, to support 4-level-paging PV
guests located anywhere in the 52-bit physical space of a
5-level-paging
host (right now they would have to be in the bottom 64 TB as the
Linux
kernel is masking away any MFN bit above 64 TB). I will send
patches to
support this.
2. Do we need 5-level-paging shadow mode support?
While strictly required for PV guests only and no 5-level-paging PV
guests are to be supported, we will need 5-level-paging shadow
mode in
the long run. This is necessary because even for a 4-level-paging PV
guest (or a 32-bit PV guest) the processor will run in 5-level-paging
mode on a huge host as switching between the paging modes is rather
complicated and should be avoided. It is much easier to run shadow
mode for the whole page table tree instead for two subtrees only.
OTOH the first step when implementing 5-level-paging in the
hypervisor
doesn't require shadow mode to be working, so it can be omitted in
the
beginning.
3. Is it possible to support 5-level-paging in Xen via a specific
binary for the first step?
Yu Zhang asked for implementing 5-level-paging via a Kconfig option
instead of dynamical switching at boot time for the first prototype.
This request was accepted in order to reduce the complexity of the
initial patches. Boot time switching should be available for the
final solution, though.
I hope I didn't miss anything.
Thanks a lot for the your help and for the summary, Juergen.
And I really need to say thank you for quite a lot people who
joined this discussion. It's quite
enlightening. :)
One thing I can recall is about the wr{fs,gs}base for pv guest.
IIRC, our agreement is to turn off
the FSGSBASE in cr4 for PV guests and try to emulate the
rd{fs,gs}base and wr{fs,gs}base in the
#UD handler.
But please correct me if I misunderstood. :)
Yes, that matches my understanding.
A second piece of emulation which needs to happen is to modify the
#PF handler to notice if a PV guest takes a fault with %cr2 being
va57 canonical but not va48 canonical. In this case, we need to
decode the instruction as far as working out the segment of the
memory operand, and inject #GP[0]/#SS[0] as appropriate.
Thanks, Andrew. So working out the segment is only to decide if #GP
or #SS is to be injected, right?
Correct. Any memory reference with an explicit %ss override, or which
uses %rsp/%rbp as a base register needs to be #SS. Everything else is
#GP.
And I'm wondering, even when pv guest and hypervisor are both running
in 4 level paging mode,
it could be possible for a #PF to have a va48 canonical address, but
there's no #GP/#SS injected.
So it is left to the PV guest kernel I guess?
Most pagefaults get handled either by Xen, or by Xen deeming that the
pagefault was caused by the guest, and passing the pagefault on to the
guest kernel. Xen doesn't really care at this point; it is the guest
kernel's job to work out what the correct next action is.
And if the answer is yes, in 5 level case, to whom shall we inject
the fault? PV guest kernel shall not
handle this fault, right?
The problem we need to fix is new with Xen running in 5-level.
Previously with Xen running in 4-level, any non-va48 canonical address
would yield #GP/#SS and Xen would handle these directly (usually, by
passing them off the to guest kernel like we do with #PF).
When Xen is running in 5-level, a 64bit PV guest still running in
4-levels is can actually use memory references in the va57 canonical
range, because the hardware is actually operating in 5 levels.
In the context of a 64bit PV guest, the vast majority of the va57
range will be not-present (as Xen is handling the L5 table on behalf
of the unaware PV guest), while the area Xen resides in will be mapped
supervisor and take a #PF that way.
If we were to do the simple thing and hand the #PF to the guest
kernel, that would be architecturally wrong, because the guest kernel
is expecting to be running in 4 levels. Therefore, Xen needs to
emulate the difference by converting the #PF to #GP/#SS for the guest
kernel, so the behaviour as observed by the guest kernel matches what
is expected from 4-levels.
Oh, right. We have talked about this before. Thanks, Andrew! :-)
Yu
I hope this is a clearer way of explaining the problem.
~Andrew
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