Re: [PATCH 7/11] KVM: Remove redundant check in the kvm_get_dirty_log_protect()

From: Paolo Bonzini
Date: Mon Jan 07 2019 - 11:20:42 EST


On 04/01/19 16:50, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> Tangentially related, does mmu_lock actually need to be held while we
> walk dirty_bitmap in kvm_{clear,get}_dirty_log_protect()? The bitmap
> itself is protected by slots_lock (a lockdep assertion would be nice
> too), e.g. can we grab the lock iff dirty_bitmap[i] != 0?

Yes, we could avoid grabbing it as long as the bitmap is zero. However,
without kvm->manual_dirty_log_protect, the granularity of
kvm_get_dirty_log_protect() is too coarse so it won't happen in
practice. Instead, with the new manual clear,
kvm_get_dirty_log_protect() does not take the lock and a well-written
userspace is not going to call the clear ioctl unless some bits are set.

Paolo