linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] x86, perf: Tweak broken BIOS rules during check_hw

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Date:	Thu, 21 May 2015 18:57:01 +0100
From:	George Dunlap <george.dunlap@...citrix.com>
To:	Don Zickus <dzickus@...hat.com>,
	Peter Zijlstra <peterz@...radead.org>
CC:	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...e.hu>,
	<konrad.wilk@...cle.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86, perf: Tweak broken BIOS rules during check_hw_exists

On 05/18/2015 08:16 PM, Don Zickus wrote:
> I stumbled upon an AMD box that had the BIOS using a hardware counter.  Instead
> of printing out a warning and continuing, it failed and blocked further perf
> counter usage.
> 
> Looking through the history, I found commit a5ebe0ba3dff had tweaked the rules
> for a xen guest on an almost identical box and now changed the behaviour.
> 
> Unfortunately the rules were tweaked incorrectly and will always lead to msr
> failures even though the msrs are completely fine.
> 
> What happens now is in arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_event.c::check_hw_exists:
> 
> <snip>
>         for (i = 0; i < x86_pmu.num_counters; i++) {
>                 reg = x86_pmu_config_addr(i);
>                 ret = rdmsrl_safe(reg, &val);
>                 if (ret)
>                         goto msr_fail;
>                 if (val & ARCH_PERFMON_EVENTSEL_ENABLE) {
>                         bios_fail = 1;
>                         val_fail = val;
>                         reg_fail = reg;
>                 }
>         }
> 
> <snip>
>         /*
>          * Read the current value, change it and read it back to see if it
>          * matches, this is needed to detect certain hardware emulators
>          * (qemu/kvm) that don't trap on the MSR access and always return 0s.
>          */
>         reg = x86_pmu_event_addr(0);
> 				^^^^
> 
> if the first perf counter is enabled, then this routine will always fail
> because the counter is running. :-(
> 
>         if (rdmsrl_safe(reg, &val))
>                 goto msr_fail;
>         val ^= 0xffffUL;
>         ret = wrmsrl_safe(reg, val);
>         ret |= rdmsrl_safe(reg, &val_new);
>         if (ret || val != val_new)
>                 goto msr_fail;
> 
> The above bios_fail used to be a 'goto' which is why it worked in the past.
> 
> Further, most vendors have migrated to using fixed counters to hide their
> evilness hence this problem rarely shows up now days except on a few old boxes.
> 
> I fixed my problem and kept the spirit of the original Xen fix, by recording a
> safe non-enable register to be used safely for the reading/writing check.
> Because it is not enabled, this passes on bare metal boxes (like metal), but
> should continue to throw an msr_fail on Xen guests because the register isn't
> emulated yet.
> 
> Now I get a proper bios_fail error message and Xen should still see their
> msr_fail message (untested).
> 
> Signed-off-by: Don Zickus <dzickus@...hat.com>

Right -- so what was actually broken was the "does this register work"
check, which needs a non-enabled register.

Would it make sense to add a comment somewhere in the code saying that
you need a disabled event counter for the MSR check to work properly?
It's sort of implied but it's not explicit.

Other than that, this looks good to me.  I'm not positive I have access
to the box I needed this for anymore -- I'll take a look for it next week.

In the mean time:

Acked-by: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@...citrix.com>

> ---
>  arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_event.c |   16 +++++++++++++++-
>  1 files changed, 15 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_event.c b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_event.c
> index 1ee7b19..e4dc4e5 100644
> --- a/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_event.c
> +++ b/arch/x86/kernel/cpu/perf_event.c
> @@ -186,6 +186,7 @@ static bool check_hw_exists(void)
>  	u64 val, val_fail, val_new= ~0;
>  	int i, reg, reg_fail, ret = 0;
>  	int bios_fail = 0;
> +	int reg_safe = -1;
>  
>  	/*
>  	 * Check to see if the BIOS enabled any of the counters, if so
> @@ -200,6 +201,8 @@ static bool check_hw_exists(void)
>  			bios_fail = 1;
>  			val_fail = val;
>  			reg_fail = reg;
> +		} else {
> +			reg_safe = i;
>  		}
>  	}
>  
> @@ -218,11 +221,22 @@ static bool check_hw_exists(void)
>  	}
>  
>  	/*
> +	 * If all the counters are enabled, the below test will always
> +	 * fail.  The tools will also become useless in this scenario.
> +	 * Just fail and disable the hardware counters.
> +	 */
> +
> +	if (reg_safe == -1) {
> +		reg = reg_safe;
> +		goto msr_fail;
> +	}
> +
> +	/*
>  	 * Read the current value, change it and read it back to see if it
>  	 * matches, this is needed to detect certain hardware emulators
>  	 * (qemu/kvm) that don't trap on the MSR access and always return 0s.
>  	 */
> -	reg = x86_pmu_event_addr(0);
> +	reg = x86_pmu_event_addr(reg_safe);
>  	if (rdmsrl_safe(reg, &val))
>  		goto msr_fail;
>  	val ^= 0xffffUL;
> 

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