linux-kernel - [PATCH 09/10] guestmemfs: Add documentation and usage instructions

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Message-ID: <20240805093245.889357-10-jgowans@amazon.com>
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2024 11:32:44 +0200
From: James Gowans <jgowans@...zon.com>
To: <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
CC: James Gowans <jgowans@...zon.com>, Sean Christopherson
	<seanjc@...gle.com>, Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@...hat.com>, Alexander Viro
	<viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>, Steve Sistare <steven.sistare@...cle.com>,
	Christian Brauner <brauner@...nel.org>, Jan Kara <jack@...e.cz>, "Anthony
 Yznaga" <anthony.yznaga@...cle.com>, Mike Rapoport <rppt@...nel.org>, "Andrew
 Morton" <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>, <linux-mm@...ck.org>, Jason Gunthorpe
	<jgg@...pe.ca>, <linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org>, Usama Arif
	<usama.arif@...edance.com>, <kvm@...r.kernel.org>, Alexander Graf
	<graf@...zon.com>, David Woodhouse <dwmw@...zon.co.uk>, Paul Durrant
	<pdurrant@...zon.co.uk>, Nicolas Saenz Julienne <nsaenz@...zon.es>
Subject: [PATCH 09/10] guestmemfs: Add documentation and usage instructions

Describe the motivation for guestmemfs, the functionality it provides,
how to compile it in, how to use it as a source of guest memory, how to
persist it across kexec and save/restore a VM.

Signed-off-by: James Gowans <jgowans@...zon.com>
---
 Documentation/filesystems/guestmemfs.rst | 87 ++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 87 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/filesystems/guestmemfs.rst

diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/guestmemfs.rst b/Documentation/filesystems/guestmemfs.rst
new file mode 100644
index 000000000000..d6ce0d194cc8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/Documentation/filesystems/guestmemfs.rst
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+.. SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0
+
+======================================================
+Guestmemfs - Persistent in-memory guest RAM filesystem
+======================================================
+
+Overview
+========
+
+Guestmemfs is an in-memory filesystem designed specifically for the purpose of
+live update of virtual machines by being a persistent across kexec source of
+guest VM memory.
+
+Live update of a hypervisor refers to act of pausing running VMs, serialising
+state, kexec-ing into a new hypervisor image, re-hydraing the KVM guests and
+resuming them. To achieve this guest memory must be preserved across kexec.
+
+Additionally, guestmemfs provides:
+- secret hiding for guest memory: the physical memory allocated for guestmemfs
+  is carved out of the direct map early in boot.
+- struct page overhead elimination: guestmemfs memory is not allocated by the
+  buddy allocator and does not have associated struct pages.
+- huge page mappings: allocations are done at PMD size and this improves TLB
+  performance (work in progress.)
+
+Compilation
+===========
+
+Guestmemfs is enabled via CONFIG_GUESTMEMFS_FS
+
+Persistence across kexec is enabled via CONFIG_KEXEC_KHO
+
+Usage
+=====
+
+On first boot (cold boot), allocate a large contiguous chunk of memory for
+guestmemfs via a kernel cmdline argument, eg:
+`guestmemfs=10G`.
+
+Mount guestmemfs:
+mount -t guestmemfs guestmemfs /mnt/guestmemfs/
+
+Create and truncate a file which will be used for guest RAM:
+
+touch /mnt/guesttmemfs/guest-ram
+truncate -s 500M /mnt/guestmemfs/guest-ram
+
+Boot a VM with this as the RAM source and the live update option enabled:
+
+qemu-system-x86_64 ... \
+  -object memory-backend-file,id=pc.ram,size=100M,mem-path=/mnt/guestmemfs/guest-ram,share=yes,prealloc=off \
+  -migrate-mode-enable cpr-reboot \
+  ...
+
+Suspect the guest and save the state via QEMU monitor:
+
+migrate_set_parameter mode cpr-reboot
+migrate file:/qemu.sav
+
+Activate KHO to serialise guestmemfs metadata and then kexec to the new
+hypervisor image:
+
+echo 1 > /sys/kernel/kho/active
+kexec -s -l --reuse-cmdline
+kexec -e
+
+After the kexec completes remount guestmemfs (or have it added to fstab)
+Re-start QEMU in live update restore mode:
+
+qemu-system-x86_64 ... \
+  -object memory-backend-file,id=pc.ram,size=100M,mem-path=/mnt/guestmemfs/guest-ram,share=yes,prealloc=off \
+  -migrate-mode-enable cpr-reboot \
+  -incoming defer
+  ...
+
+Finally restore the VM state and resume it via QEMU console:
+
+migrate_incoming file:/qemu.sav
+
+Future Work
+===========
+- NUMA awareness and multi-mount point support
+- Actually creating PMD-level mappings in page tables
+- guest_memfd style interface for confidential computing
+- supporting PUD-level allocations and mappings
+- MCE handling
+- Persisting IOMMU pgtables to allow DMA to guestmemfs during kexec
-- 
2.34.1