Re: [PATCH] fix kvmclock bug

2010-09-29 Thread Avi Kivity

 On 09/19/2010 02:15 AM, Zachary Amsden wrote:

commit 1abe7e8806fd71ea802c6622ed3ce7821a18f271
Author: Zachary Amsdenzams...@redhat.com
Date:   Sat Sep 18 13:58:37 2010 -1000

 Fix kvmclock bug


I think there's some redundancy here.  Anyone who has tracked your 
kernel work knows you've done a lot of work on kvmclock, so Fix bug 
would be just as descriptive.  Of course, if we fix something, it's 
because it was a bug, so Fix is all that's really necessary (bug 
would be reserved for commits that introduce bugs).  In the case of 
kvmclock, it's hard to see how new features could be added, and it has a 
pretty bad history of bugs, so most readers would probably deduce that a 
commit fixes a bug.  I don't really see why you wrote a subject line at all.


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Re: [PATCH] fix kvmclock bug

2010-09-28 Thread Jan Kiszka
Am 27.09.2010 21:00, Zachary Amsden wrote:
 On 09/25/2010 11:54 PM, Jan Kiszka wrote:
 That only leaves us with the likely wrong unstable declaration of the
 TSC after resume. And that raises the question for me if KVM is actually
 that much smarter than the Linux kernel in detecting TSC jumps. If
 something is missing, can't we improve the kernel's detection mechanism
 which already has suspend/resume support?

 
 Linux must make the the conservative choice about TSC being declared
 unstable; if it is possible that it has become unstable, it is
 unstable.  Unfortunately, this bodes not well for us, as most of the
 finer points of accuracy depend on having a stable TSC.
 
 There's a bunch of places that declare TSC unstable, and where in the
 suspend / resume cycle that happens would depend on your actual hardware.

It's absolutely clear where this happens: kvm_arch_vcpu_load. And it
seems to happen as the TSC is reset due to suspend-to-RAM.

Again: Linux recovers from this and continues to use the TSC. KVM is
more picky, so my question is if this is really required.

Jan

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Re: [PATCH] fix kvmclock bug

2010-09-26 Thread Jan Kiszka
Am 24.09.2010 09:28, Jan Kiszka wrote:
 Am 19.09.2010 02:15, Zachary Amsden wrote:
 For CPUs with unstable TSC, we null time offset between not just VCPU
 switches, but all preemptions of the kvm thread.  This makes a bug much
 more likely where the kvmclock values are updated before a successful
 exit from virt, causing an underflow.

 The null offsetting was added at : bf0fb4a42ba7eb362f4013bd2e93209666793e66
 The underflow happens with this additional patch : 
 cf839f5da2b0779b9ec8b990f851fb4e7d681da0

 There is a secondary bug, which is that TSC fails to advance with real
 time on unstable TSC, but the fix is much more involved (it requires the
 TSC catchup code).

 For now, this patch is sufficient to get things working again for me.
 
 ...but not for me. I still face stuck (or infinitely slow) guests that
 want to use kvmclock once tsc_unstable gets set. Or is this patch
 addressing a different issue?

Commit bfb3f332 (TSC catchup mode) in kvm.git finally resolves the
issue here.

That only leaves us with the likely wrong unstable declaration of the
TSC after resume. And that raises the question for me if KVM is actually
that much smarter than the Linux kernel in detecting TSC jumps. If
something is missing, can't we improve the kernel's detection mechanism
which already has suspend/resume support?

Jan



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Re: [PATCH] fix kvmclock bug

2010-09-24 Thread Jan Kiszka
Am 19.09.2010 02:15, Zachary Amsden wrote:
 For CPUs with unstable TSC, we null time offset between not just VCPU
 switches, but all preemptions of the kvm thread.  This makes a bug much
 more likely where the kvmclock values are updated before a successful
 exit from virt, causing an underflow.
 
 The null offsetting was added at : bf0fb4a42ba7eb362f4013bd2e93209666793e66
 The underflow happens with this additional patch : 
 cf839f5da2b0779b9ec8b990f851fb4e7d681da0
 
 There is a secondary bug, which is that TSC fails to advance with real
 time on unstable TSC, but the fix is much more involved (it requires the
 TSC catchup code).
 
 For now, this patch is sufficient to get things working again for me.

...but not for me. I still face stuck (or infinitely slow) guests that
want to use kvmclock once tsc_unstable gets set. Or is this patch
addressing a different issue?

Jan



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[PATCH] fix kvmclock bug

2010-09-18 Thread Zachary Amsden
For CPUs with unstable TSC, we null time offset between not just VCPU 
switches, but all preemptions of the kvm thread.  This makes a bug much 
more likely where the kvmclock values are updated before a successful 
exit from virt, causing an underflow.


The null offsetting was added at : bf0fb4a42ba7eb362f4013bd2e93209666793e66
The underflow happens with this additional patch :  
cf839f5da2b0779b9ec8b990f851fb4e7d681da0


There is a secondary bug, which is that TSC fails to advance with real 
time on unstable TSC, but the fix is much more involved (it requires the 
TSC catchup code).


For now, this patch is sufficient to get things working again for me.
commit 1abe7e8806fd71ea802c6622ed3ce7821a18f271
Author: Zachary Amsden zams...@redhat.com
Date:   Sat Sep 18 13:58:37 2010 -1000

Fix kvmclock bug

If preempted after kvmclock values are updated, but before hardware
virtualization is entered, the last tsc time as read by the guest is
never set.  It underflows the next time kvmclock is updated if there
has not yet been a successful entry / exit into hardware virt.

Fix this by simply setting last_tsc to the newly read tsc value so
that any computed nsec advance of kvmclock is nulled.

Signed-off-by: Zachary Amsden zams...@redhat.com

diff --git a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
index 76db85a..09f468a 100644
--- a/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
+++ b/arch/x86/kvm/x86.c
@@ -1101,6 +1101,7 @@ static int kvm_guest_time_update(struct kvm_vcpu *v)
vcpu-hv_clock.tsc_timestamp = tsc_timestamp;
vcpu-hv_clock.system_time = kernel_ns + v-kvm-arch.kvmclock_offset;
vcpu-last_kernel_ns = kernel_ns;
+   vcpu-last_guest_tsc = tsc_timestamp;
vcpu-hv_clock.flags = 0;
 
/*