linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] KVM: hyper-v: Add new exit reason HYPERV

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Message-ID: <45888d26-89d2-dba6-41cb-de2d58cd5345@redhat.com>
Date:   Fri, 23 Apr 2021 12:15:01 +0200
From:   Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>
To:     Alexander Graf <graf@...zon.com>,
        Siddharth Chandrasekaran <sidcha@...zon.de>,
        Sean Christopherson <seanjc@...gle.com>,
        Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@...hat.com>,
        Wanpeng Li <wanpengli@...cent.com>,
        Jim Mattson <jmattson@...gle.com>,
        Joerg Roedel <joro@...tes.org>,
        Thomas Gleixner <tglx@...utronix.de>,
        Ingo Molnar <mingo@...hat.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@...en8.de>,
        x86@...nel.org, "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@...or.com>
Cc:     Evgeny Iakovlev <eyakovl@...zon.de>, Liran Alon <liran@...zon.com>,
        Ioannis Aslanidis <iaslan@...zon.de>, kvm@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] KVM: hyper-v: Add new exit reason HYPERV_OVERLAY

On 23/04/21 11:58, Alexander Graf wrote:
>> In theory userspace doesn't know how KVM wishes to implement the
>> hypercall page, especially if Xen hypercalls are enabled as well.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree with that sentiment :). User space is the one that 
> sets the xen compat mode. All we need to do is declare the ORing as part 
> of the KVM ABI. Which we effectively are doing already, because it's 
> part of the ABI to the guest, no?

Good point.  But it may change in the future based on KVM_ENABLE_CAP or 
whatever, and duplicating code between userspace and kernel is ugly.  We 
already have too many unwritten conventions around CPUID, MSRs, get/set 
state ioctls, etc.

That said, this definitely tilts the balance against adding an ioctl to 
write the hypercall page contents.  Userspace can either use the 
KVM_SET_MSR or assemble it on its own, and one of the two should be okay.

Paolo

>>
>> But userspace has two plausible ways to get the page contents:
>>
>> 1) add a ioctl to write the hypercall page contents to an arbitrary
>> userspace address
>>
>> 2) after userspace updates the memslots to add the overlay page at the
>> right place, use KVM_SET_MSR from userspace (which won't be filtered
>> because it's host initiated)
>>
>> The second has the advantage of not needing any new code at all, but
>> it's a bit more ugly.
> 
> The more of all of that hyper-v code we can have live in user space, the 
> happier I am :).