Date:	Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:28:15 -0600
From:	Alex Williamson <alex.williamson@...hat.com>
To:	"Michael S. Tsirkin" <mst@...hat.com>
Cc:	avi@...hat.com, gleb@...hat.com, kvm@...r.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH v9 0/2] kvm: level irqfd support

On Wed, 2012-08-22 at 03:31 +0300, Michael S. Tsirkin wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 21, 2012 at 01:28:57PM -0600, Alex Williamson wrote:
> > Here's the much anticipated re-write of support for level irqfds.  As
> > Michael suggested, I've rolled the eoi/ack notification fd into
> > KVM_IRQFD as a new mode.  For lack of a better name, as there seems to
> > be objections to associating this specifically with an EOI or an ACK,
> > I've name this OADN or "On Ack, De-assert & Notify".
> > 
> > Patch 1of2 switches current KVM_IRQFDs to use their own IRQ source ID
> > since we're potentially stepping on KVM_USERSPACE_IRQ_SOURCE_ID.
> > Unfurtunately I was not able to make 2of2 use a single IRQ source ID,
> > the reason is it's racy.  Objects to track OADNs are made dynamically,
> > we look through existing ones for a match under spinlock and setup a
> > new one if there's no match.  On teardown, we can remove the OADN from
> > the list under lock, but that same lock prevents us from de-assigning
> > the IRQ ACK notifier or waiting for an RCU grace period.  We must make
> > sure that any unused GSI is de-asserted, but the above means it's
> > possible that another OADN has been created for this source ID/GSI
> > and de-asserting the GSI could lead to breakage.
> 
> I do not see it. What breakage? Could you give an example please?
> 
> 
> I think what you are saying is last deassign must clear
> since otherwise we never will clear.
> I agree it is either that or delay deassign until ack.
> 
> Can it be as simple as this (after all rcu etc dances)?
> 	lock irqfds
> 	if no oadns
> 		set level to 0
> 	unlock irqfds
> ?

lock irqfds
remove irqfd from oadn list
if no oadns
    remove oadn
    set gsi 0
unlock
                                    lock irqfds
                                    new oadn
                                    unlock irqfds

>> EOI 
                                                          ack notify new oadn
                                                          de-assert gsi
                                                          notify new oadn
>> re-assert irqfd
                                                          ack notify old oadn
                                                          de-assert gsi
                                                          notify old oadn

synchronize_rcu

kvm_unregister_irq_ack_notifier

So, because the unregister is removed from the final clear and because
we share an IRQ source ID there's a window where we can have two oadns
registered for the same GSI.  The new one will de-assert and notify
while the old one has an empty list to notify, but still de-asserts.  We
can therefore de-assert w/o notify.

By using a new source ID, we separate the two so users of the new oadn
can't race the old and we can cleanly free the old source ID,
de-asserting it.

> >  Instead each OADN
> > object gets it's own source ID, but these are all shared by users
> > of the same GSI.  So for PCI devices, we might have up to 4 IRQ
> > source IDs allocated.
> > 
> > Michael had also suggested avoiding reference counting and using
> > list_empty for this OADN object.  Unfortunately, that doesn't work
> > for similar reasons.  We want to release the OADN object underlock,
> > preventing others from re-using it on the free path, but in order
> > to have lock-less de-assert & notify we use RCU, meaning we can't
> > trust list_empty until after an RCU grace period, which must be
> > done outside of spinlocks.
> 
> confused. list empty on assign/deassing would be under lock
> so no need for grace periods to trust it.
> what am I missing?
> 
> But if you like kref more that is OK too.

Maybe I'm misinterpreting this:

include/linux/rculist.h:
/**
 * list_del_rcu - deletes entry from list without re-initialization
 * @entry: the element to delete from the list.
 *
 * Note: list_empty() on entry does not return true after this,
 * the entry is in an undefined state. It is useful for RCU based
 * lockfree traversal.

If I can trust list_empty on oadn->irqfds, which maybe I can re-reading
it again, then we can drop the kref.  Thanks,

Alex


> > If there are suggestions how we can handle these better, please
> > make them, but I think this compromise is race-free and still
> > manages to make allocation of IRQ source IDs mostly a non-issue
> > for device assignment limits.  Thanks,
> > 
> > Alex
> > 
> > ---
> > 
> > Alex Williamson (2):
> >       kvm: On Ack, De-assert & Notify KVM_IRQFD extension
> >       kvm: Use a reserved IRQ source ID for irqfd
> > 
> > 
> >  Documentation/virtual/kvm/api.txt |   13 ++
> >  arch/x86/kvm/x86.c                |    4 +
> >  include/linux/kvm.h               |    7 +
> >  include/linux/kvm_host.h          |    2 
> >  virt/kvm/eventfd.c                |  199 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++-
> >  5 files changed, 218 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)



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