Re: [PATCH v2] KVM: x86: Preserve TDP MMU roots until they are explicitly invalidated

[Sean Christopherson]

On Fri, Apr 21, 2023, David Matlack wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 21, 2023 at 2:49 PM Sean Christopherson <seanjc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >  void kvm_tdp_mmu_invalidate_all_roots(struct kvm *kvm)
> >  {
> >         struct kvm_mmu_page *root;
> >
> > -       lockdep_assert_held_write(&kvm->mmu_lock);
> > -       list_for_each_entry(root, &kvm->arch.tdp_mmu_roots, link) {
> > -               if (!root->role.invalid &&
> > -                   !WARN_ON_ONCE(!kvm_tdp_mmu_get_root(root))) {
> > +       /*
> > +        * Note!  mmu_lock isn't held when destroying the VM!  There can't be
> > +        * other references to @kvm, i.e. nothing else can invalidate roots,
> > +        * but walking the list of roots does need to be guarded against roots
> > +        * being deleted by the asynchronous zap worker.
> > +        */
> > +       rcu_read_lock();
> > +
> > +       list_for_each_entry_rcu(root, &kvm->arch.tdp_mmu_roots, link) {
> 
> I see that roots are removed from the list with list_del_rcu(), so I
> agree this should be safe.
> 
> KVM could, alternatively, acquire the mmu_lock in
> kvm_mmu_uninit_tdp_mmu(), which would let us keep the lockdep
> assertion and drop the rcu_read_lock() + comment. That might be worth
> it in case someone accidentally adds a call to
> kvm_tdp_mmu_invalidate_all_roots() without mmu_lock outside of VM
> teardown. kvm_mmu_uninit_tdp_mmu() is not a particularly performance
> sensitive path and adding the mmu_lock wouldn't add much overhead
> anyway (it would block for at most a few milliseconds waiting for the
> async work to reschedule).

Heh, I actually started to ping you off-list to specifically discuss this option,
but then decided that not waiting those few milliseconds might be worthwhile for
some use cases.  I also couldn't quite convince myself that it would only be a few
milliseconds, e.g. if the worker is zapping a fully populated 5-level root, there
are no other tasks scheduled on _its_ CPU, and CONFIG_PREEMPTION=n (which neuters
rwlock_needbreak()).

The other reason I opted for not taking mmu_lock is that, with the persistent roots
approach, I don't think it's actually strictly necessary for kvm_mmu_zap_all_fast()
to invaliate roots while holding mmu_lock for write.  Holding slots_lock ensures
that only a single task can be doing invalidations, versus the old model where
putting the last reference to a root could happen just about anywhere.  And
allocating a new root and zapping from mmu_noitifiers requires holding mmu_lock for
write, so I _think_ we could getaway with holding mmu_lock for read.  Maybe.

It's largely a moot point since kvm_mmu_zap_all_fast() needs to hold mmu_lock for
write anyways to play nice with the shadow MMU, i.e. I don't expect us to ever
want to pursue a change in this area.  But at the same time I was struggling to
write a comment explaining why the VM destruction path "had" to take mmu_lock.