Re: [Qemu-devel] [PATCH v10 16/26] intel_iommu: add support for split irqchip

[Peter Xu]

On Wed, Jan 04, 2017 at 11:33:36AM +0100, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> On 2017-01-03 07:15, Peter Xu wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 03:27:50PM +0200, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> >> On 2016-06-26 03:48, Peter Xu wrote:
> >>> On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 05:18:40PM +0200, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> >>>> On 2016-06-25 15:18, Peter Xu wrote:
> >>>>> On Sat, Jun 25, 2016 at 10:08:10AM +0200, Jan Kiszka wrote:
> >>>
> >>> [...]
> >>>
> >>>>> I have a thought on how to implement the "sink" you have mentioned:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> First of all, in KVM, we provide a new KVM_IRQ_ROUTING_* type, maybe
> >>>>> called:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>   KVM_IRQ_ROUTING_EVENTFD
> >>>>
> >>>> Not really, because all sources are either using eventfds, which you can
> >>>> also terminate in user space (already done for vhost and vfio in certain
> >>>> scenarios - IIRC) or originate there anyway (IOAPIC).
> >>>
> >>> But how should we handle the cases when the interrupt path are all in
> >>> kernel?
> >>
> >> There are none which we can't redirect (only full in-kernel irqchip
> >> would have, but that's unsupported anyway).
> >>
> >>>
> >>> For vhost, data should be transfered all inside kernel when split
> >>> irqchip and irqfd are used: when vhost got data, it triggers irqfd to
> >>> deliver the interrupt to KVM. Along the way, we should all in kernel.
> >>>
> >>> For vfio, we have vfio_msihandler() who handles the hardware IRQ and
> >>> then triggers irqfd as well to KVM. Again, it seems all in kernel
> >>> space, no chance to stop that as well.
> >>>
> >>> Please correct me if I was wrong.
> >>
> >> Look at what vhost is doing e.g.: when a virtqueue is masked, it
> >> installs an event notifier that records incoming events in a pending
> >> state field. When it's unmasked, the corresponding KVM irqfd is installed.
> > 
> > Hmm I think it's time I pick up this topic up again... :)
> > 
> > Since it's been half a year from the last post of this thread (I
> > believe this thread is the so-called "cold data" and should be stored
> > on tapes already... and sorry fot the long delay), I'd like to do a
> > quick summary on this: interrupt remap still cannot work well when we
> > install fault interrupts - when that happens, we should inject VT-d
> > fault, rather than keeping silence.
> > 
> > The suggestion from Jan above should be a good solution that only need
> > to touch qemu part - that's the most benefit AFAIU. However, OTOH IMO
> > we need to modify all the kvm irqfd users with this fix (pci-assign,
> > ioapic, ivshmem, vfio-pci, virtio) - we need to have all these devices
> > init with an "fault sink" eventfd, then when we detected specific
> > irqfd install error, we install the "fault sink". What's worse, if we
> > add new devices with irqfd support, we need to implement the same
> > error handling logic as well. Am I understanding it correctly? If so,
> > isn't that awkward?
> > 
> > Now I am re-thinking about my KVM_IRQ_ROUTING_EVENTFD proposal to do
> > it - in that case, we should not need to worry about the users of kvm
> > irqfd, and the error handling is done automatically even with new
> > irqfd users coming in. The disadvantage is of course we need to touch
> > both qemu and kvm, also we need to touch KVM API for it (though I
> > think it'll only need very small change in KVM). And not sure whether
> > that would worth it.
> > 
> > Or, any better way to do it?
> > 
> > Hope I didn't miss anything. Comments are welcomed!
> > 
> 
> I don't have the details in mind again, but I suppose the only
> alternative to fixing a QEMU boilerplate code issue with new KVM kernel
> interface is abstracting the common patterns in QEMU that all the irqfd
> users share and solve solve that topic once. Might turn out, though,
> that the exiting kernel interface prevents this...

Hmm, (after a quick glance) I was just afraid that I might need to
touch lots of codes in QEMU even to provide such a common layer for
this single fault tolerance feature.

Then let me think it over again... Thanks Jan!

-- peterx