Re: [Xen-devel] [RFC 0/6] XEN scheduling hardening

[Andrii Anisov <andrii.anisov@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Dario

On 26.07.19 14:56, Dario Faggioli wrote:
> [Adding George plus others x86, ARM and core-Xen people]
>
> Hi Andrii,
>
> First of all, thanks a lot for this series!
>
> The problem you mention is a long standing one, and I'm glad we're
> eventually starting to properly look into it.
>
> I already have one comment: I think I can see from where this come
> from, but I don't think 'XEN scheduling hardening' is what we're doing
> in this series... I'd go for something like "xen: sched: improve idle
> and vcpu time accounting precision", or something like that.
I do not really stick at the naming. Will rename on the next version.

> > While the series is the early RFC, several points are still
> > untouched:
> >   - Now the time elapsed from the last rescheduling is not fully
> > charged from
> >     the current vcpu budget. Are there any changes needed in the
> > existing
> >     scheduling algorithms?
> I'll think about it, but out of the top of my head, I don't see how
> this can be a problem. Scheduling algorithms (should!) base their logic
> and their calculations on actual vcpus' runtime, not much on idle
> vcpus' one.
IMO RTDS and ARINC653 scheduling algorithms are not affected because they are 
operating with the absolute value of time spent by vcpu and a future event 
(nearest deadline or major frame end).
But I have my doubts about credit schedulers (credit, credit2). Now we have an 
entity which unconditionally steals time from some periods. Wouldn't it affect 
calculation of domains budget proportions with the respect to the domains 
weight/cap?


> >   - How to avoid the absolute top priority of tasklets (what is obeyed
> > by all
> >     schedulers so far). Should idle vcpu be scheduled as the normal
> > guest vcpus
> >     (through queues, priorities, etc)?
> Now, this is something to think about, and try to understand if
> anything would break if we go for it. I mean, I see why you'd want to
> do that, but tasklets and softirqs works the way they do, in Xen, since
> when they were introduced, I believe.
>
> Therefore, even if there wouldn't be any subsystem explicitly relying
> on the current behavior (which should be verified), I think we are at
> high risk of breaking things, if we change.
>
> That's not to mean it would not be a good change, or that it is
> impossible... It's, rather, just to raise some awareness. :-)
I understand that this area is conservative and hard to change.
But the current scheduling in XEN is quite non-deterministic. And, IMO, with 
that mess XEN can not go into any safety certified system.

> >   - Idle vcpu naming is quite misleading. It is a kind of system
> > (hypervisor)
> >     task which is responsible for some hypervisor work. Should it be
> >     renamed/reconsidered?
> Well, that's a design question, even for this very series, isn't it? I
> mean, I see two ways of achieving proper idle time accounting:
> 1) you leave things as they are --i.e., idle does not only do idling,
>     it also does all these other things, but you make sure you don't
>     count the time they take as idle time;
> 2) you move all these activities out of idle, and in some other
>     context, and you let idle just do the idling. At that point, time
>     accounted to idle will be only actual idle time, as the time it
>     took to Xen to do all the other things is now accounted to the new
>     execution context which is running them.
>
> So, which path this path series takes (I believe 1), and which path you
> (and others) believe is better?
This have to be discussed.
I would stress again this is the set of minimal changes following existing 
approaches (e.g. I don't like runstate usage here)

> (And, yes, discussing this is why I've added, apart from George, some
> other x86, ARM, and core-Xen people)
Thank you.

--
Sincerely,
Andrii Anisov.

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