Date:   Thu, 22 Mar 2018 09:10:46 +0000
From:   "Tian, Kevin" <kevin.tian@...el.com>
To:     Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@...hat.com>
CC:     Shameer Kolothum <shameerali.kolothum.thodi@...wei.com>,
        "eric.auger@...hat.com" <eric.auger@...hat.com>,
        "pmorel@...ux.vnet.ibm.com" <pmorel@...ux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        "kvm@...r.kernel.org" <kvm@...r.kernel.org>,
        "linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org" <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        "xuwei5@...ilicon.com" <xuwei5@...ilicon.com>,
        "linuxarm@...wei.com" <linuxarm@...wei.com>,
        "iommu@...ts.linux-foundation.org" <iommu@...ts.linux-foundation.org>
Subject: RE: [PATCH v5 0/7] vfio/type1: Add support for valid iova list
 management

> From: Alex Williamson
> Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2018 1:11 AM
> 
> On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 03:28:16 +0000
> "Tian, Kevin" <kevin.tian@...el.com> wrote:
> 
> > > From: Alex Williamson [mailto:alex.williamson@...hat.com]
> > > Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2018 6:55 AM
> > >
> > > On Mon, 19 Mar 2018 08:28:32 +0000
> > > "Tian, Kevin" <kevin.tian@...el.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > > From: Shameer Kolothum
> > > > > Sent: Friday, March 16, 2018 12:35 AM
> > > > >
> > > > > This series introduces an iova list associated with a vfio
> > > > > iommu. The list is kept updated taking care of iommu apertures,
> > > > > and reserved regions. Also this series adds checks for any conflict
> > > > > with existing dma mappings whenever a new device group is
> attached
> > > to
> > > > > the domain.
> > > > >
> > > > > User-space can retrieve valid iova ranges using
> > > VFIO_IOMMU_GET_INFO
> > > > > ioctl capability chains. Any dma map request outside the valid iova
> > > > > range will be rejected.
> > > >
> > > > GET_INFO is done at initialization time which is good for cold attached
> > > > devices. If a hotplugged device may cause change of valid iova ranges
> > > > at run-time, then there could be potential problem (which however is
> > > > difficult for user space or orchestration stack to figure out in advance)
> > > > Can we do some extension like below to make hotplug case cleaner?
> > >
> > > Let's be clear what we mean by hotplug here, as I see it, the only
> > > relevant hotplug would be a physical device, hot added to the host,
> > > which becomes a member of an existing, in-use IOMMU group.  If, on
> the
> > > other hand, we're talking about hotplug related to the user process,
> > > there's nothing asynchronous about that.  For instance in the QEMU
> > > case, QEMU must add the group to the container, at which point it can
> > > evaluate the new iova list and remove the group from the container if
> > > it doesn't like the result.  So what would be a case of the available
> > > iova list for a group changing as a result of adding a device?
> >
> > My original thought was about the latter case. At that moment
> > I was not sure whether the window between adding/removing
> > the group may cause some issue if there are right some IOVA
> > allocations happening in parallel. But looks Qemu can anyway
> > handle it well as long as such scenario is considered.
> 
> I believe the kernel patches here and the existing code are using
> locking to prevent races between mapping changes and device changes, so
> the acceptance of a new group into a container and the iova list for a
> container should always be correct for the order these operations
> arrive.  Beyond that, I don't believe it's the kernel's responsibility
> to do anything more than block groups from being added if they conflict
> with current mappings.  The user already has the minimum interfaces
> they need to manage other scenarios.

Agree

> 
> > > > - An interface allowing user space to request VFIO rejecting further
> > > > attach_group if doing so may cause iova range change. e.g. Qemu can
> > > > do such request once completing initial GET_INFO;
> > >
> > > For the latter case above, it seems unnecessary, QEMU can revert the
> > > attach, we're only promising that the attach won't interfere with
> > > existing mappings.  For the host hotplug case, the user has no control,
> > > the new device is a member of the iommu group and therefore
> necessarily
> > > becomes a part of container.  I imagine there are plenty of other holes
> > > in this scenario already.
> > >
> > > > - or an event notification to user space upon change of valid iova
> > > > ranges when attaching a new device at run-time. It goes one step
> > > > further - even attach may cause iova range change, it may still
> > > > succeed as long as Qemu hasn't allocated any iova in impacted
> > > > range
> > >
> > > Same as above, in the QEMU hotplug case, the user is orchestrating the
> > > adding of the group to the container, they can then check the iommu
> > > info on their own and determine what, if any, changes are relevant to
> > > them, knowing that the addition would not succeed if any current
> > > mappings where affected.  In the host case, a notification would be
> > > required, but we'd first need to identify exactly how the iova list can
> > > change asynchronous to the user doing anything.  Thanks,
> >
> > for host hotplug, possibly notification could be an opt-in model.
> > meaning if user space doesn't explicitly request receiving notification
> > on such event, the device is just left in unused state (vfio-pci still
> > claims the device, assuming it assigned to the container owner, but
> > the owner doesn't use it)
> 
> Currently, if a device is added to a live group, the kernel will print
> a warning.  We have a todo to bind that device to a vfio-bus driver,
> but I'm not sure that isn't an overreach into the system policy
> decisions.  If system policy decides to bind to a vfio bus driver, all
> is well, but we might be missing the iommu backend adding the device to
> the iommu domain, so it probably won't work unless the requester ID is
> actually aliased to the IOMMU (such as a conventional PCI device), a
> standard PCIe device simply wouldn't be part of the IOMMU domain and
> would generate IOMMU faults if the user attempts to use it (AFAICT).
> OTOH, if system policy binds the device to a native host driver, then
> the integrity of the group for userspace use is compromised, which is
> terminated with prejudice via a BUG.  Obviously the user is never
> obligated to listen to signals and we don't provide a signal here as
> this scenario is mostly theoretical, though it would be relatively easy
> with software hotplug to artificially induce such a condition.
> 
> However, I'm still not sure how adding a device to a group is
> necessarily relevant to this series, particularly how it would change
> the iova list.  When we add groups to a container, we're potentially
> crossing boundaries between IOMMUs and may therefore pickup new
> reserved resource requirements, but devices within a group seem like
> reserved regions should already be accounted for in the existing group.
> At least so long as we've decided reserved regions are only the IOMMU
> imposed reserved regions and not routing within the group, which we've
> hand waved as the user's problem already.  Thanks,
> 

oh it's not relevant to this series now. As I said my earlier concern
is more on guest hotplug side which has been closed. Sorry for 
distracting the thread when further replying to host hotplug which
should be in a separate thread if necessary (so I'll stop further comment
here until there is a real need for that part. :-)

Thanks
Kevin

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