linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH 0/18][RFC] Nested Paging support for Nested SVM (aka NPT-Virtualization)

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Message-ID: <4B99EF09.1080608@redhat.com>
Date:	Fri, 12 Mar 2010 09:36:41 +0200
From:	Avi Kivity <avi@...hat.com>
To:	Marcelo Tosatti <mtosatti@...hat.com>
CC:	Joerg Roedel <joerg.roedel@....com>,
	Alexander Graf <agraf@...e.de>, kvm@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/18][RFC] Nested Paging support for Nested SVM (aka NPT-Virtualization)

On 03/11/2010 10:58 PM, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
>
>>> Can't you translate l2_gpa ->  l1_gpa walking the current l1 nested
>>> pagetable, and pass that to the kvm tdp fault path (with the correct
>>> context setup)?
>>>        
>> If I understand your suggestion correctly, I think thats exactly whats
>> done in the patches. Some words about the design:
>>
>> For nested-nested we need to shadow the l1-nested-ptable on the host.
>> This is done using the vcpu->arch.mmu context which holds the l1 paging
>> modes while the l2 is running. On a npt-fault from the l2 we just
>> instrument the shadow-ptable code. This is the common case. because it
>> happens all the time while the l2 is running.
>>      
> OK, makes sense now, I was missing the fact that the l1-nested-ptable
> needs to be shadowed and l1 translations to it must be write protected.
>    

Shadow converts (gva -> gpa -> hpa) to (gva -> hpa) or (ngpa -> gpa -> 
hpa) to (ngpa -> hpa) equally well.  In the second case npt still does 
(ngva -> ngpa).

> You should disable out of sync shadow so that l1 guest writes to
> l1-nested-ptables always trap.

Why?  The guest is under obligation to flush the tlb if it writes to a 
page table, and we will resync on that tlb flush.

Unsync makes just as much sense for nnpt.  Think of khugepaged in the 
guest eating a page table and spitting out a PDE.

> And in the trap case, you'd have to
> invalidate l2 shadow pagetable entries that used the (now obsolete)
> l1-nested-ptable entry. Does that happen automatically?
>    

What do you mean by 'l2 shadow ptable entries'?  There are the guest's 
page tables (ordinary direct mapped, unless the guest's guest is also 
running an npt-enabled hypervisor), and the host page tables.  When the 
guest writes to each page table, we invalidate the shadows.

-- 
Do not meddle in the internals of kernels, for they are subtle and quick to panic.

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