Re: [PATCH v4 2/2] misc: Add a mechanism to detect stalls on guest vCPUs

[Guenter Roeck]

On 4/29/22 02:26, Sebastian Ene wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 29, 2022 at 10:51:14AM +0200, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> > On Fri, Apr 29, 2022 at 08:30:33AM +0000, Sebastian Ene wrote:
> > > This driver creates per-cpu hrtimers which are required to do the
> > > periodic 'pet' operation. On a conventional watchdog-core driver, the
> > > userspace is responsible for delivering the 'pet' events by writing to
> > > the particular /dev/watchdogN node. In this case we require a strong
> > > thread affinity to be able to account for lost time on a per vCPU.
> > >
> > > This part of the driver is the 'frontend' which is reponsible for
> > > delivering the periodic 'pet' events, configuring the virtual peripheral
> > > and listening for cpu hotplug events. The other part of the driver
> > > handles the peripheral emulation and this part accounts for lost time by
> > > looking at the /proc/{}/task/{}/stat entries and is located here:
> > > https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromiumos/platform/crosvm/+/3548817
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Sebastian Ene <sebastianene@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > ---
> > >   drivers/misc/Kconfig       |  12 +++
> > >   drivers/misc/Makefile      |   1 +
> > >   drivers/misc/vm-watchdog.c | 206 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> > >   3 files changed, 219 insertions(+)
> > >   create mode 100644 drivers/misc/vm-watchdog.c
> > >
> > > diff --git a/drivers/misc/Kconfig b/drivers/misc/Kconfig
> > > index 2b9572a6d114..26c3a99e269c 100644
> > > --- a/drivers/misc/Kconfig
> > > +++ b/drivers/misc/Kconfig
> > > @@ -493,6 +493,18 @@ config OPEN_DICE
> > >   
> > >   	  If unsure, say N.
> > >   
> > > +config VM_WATCHDOG
> > > +	tristate "Virtual Machine Watchdog"
> > > +	select LOCKUP_DETECTOR
> > > +	help
> > > +	  Detect CPU locks on the virtual machine. This driver relies on the
> > > +	  hrtimers which are CPU-binded to do the 'pet' operation. When a vCPU
> > > +	  has to do a 'pet', it exits the guest through MMIO write and the
> > > +	  backend driver takes into account the lost ticks for this particular
> > > +	  CPU.
>
> Hi,
>
> > There's nothing to keep this tied to a virtual machine at all, right?
> > You are just relying on some iomem address to be updated, so it should
> > be a "generic_iomem_watchdog" driver as there's nothing specific to vms
> > at all from what I can tell.
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > greg k-h
>
> That's right although I might think of using the term "generic lockup detector"

Agreed, that would be a much better name.

Guenter


> instead of watchdog. The only reason why I would keep "virtual machine"
> word in, is that there is no actual hardware for this.
>
> Thanks,
> Seb