[PATCH v14 00/16] KVM PCIe/MSI passthrough on ARM/ARM64

[Auger Eric]

Hi Will,

On 20/10/2016 19:32, Will Deacon wrote:
> Hi Eric,
> 
> Thanks for posting this.
> 
> On Wed, Oct 12, 2016 at 01:22:08PM +0000, Eric Auger wrote:
>> This is the second respin on top of Robin's series [1], addressing Alex' comments.
>>
>> Major changes are:
>> - MSI-doorbell API now is moved to DMA IOMMU API following Alex suggestion
>>   to put all API pieces at the same place (so eventually in the IOMMU
>>   subsystem)
>> - new iommu_domain_msi_resv struct and accessor through DOMAIN_ATTR_MSI_RESV
>>   domain with mirror VFIO capability
>> - more robustness I think in the VFIO layer
>> - added "iommu/iova: fix __alloc_and_insert_iova_range" since with the current
>>   code I failed allocating an IOVA page in a single page domain with upper part
>>   reserved
>>
>> IOVA range exclusion will be handled in a separate series
>>
>> The priority really is to discuss and freeze the API and especially the MSI
>> doorbell's handling. Do we agree to put that in DMA IOMMU?
>>
>> Note: the size computation does not take into account possible page overlaps
>> between doorbells but it would add quite a lot of complexity i think.
>>
>> Tested on AMD Overdrive (single GICv2m frame) with I350 VF assignment.
> 
> Marc, Robin and I sat down and had a look at the series and, whilst it's
> certainly addressing a problem that we desperately want to see fixed, we
> think that it's slightly over-engineering in places and could probably
> be simplified in the interest of getting something upstream that can be
> used as a base, on which the ABI can be extended as concrete use-cases
> become clear.
> 
> Stepping back a minute, we're trying to reserve some of the VFIO virtual
> address space so that it can be used by devices to map their MSI doorbells
> using the SMMU. With your patches, this requires that (a) the kernel
> tells userspace about the size and alignment of the doorbell region
> (MSI_RESV) and (b) userspace tells the kernel the VA-range that can be
> used (RESERVED_MSI_IOVA).
> 
> However, this is all special-cased for MSI doorbells and there are
> potentially other regions of the VFIO address space that are reserved
> and need to be communicated to userspace as well. We already know of
> hardware where the PCI RC intercepts p2p accesses before they make it
> to the SMMU, and other hardware where the MSI doorbell is at a fixed
> address. This means that we need a mechanism to communicate *fixed*
> regions of virtual address space that are reserved by VFIO. I don't
> even particularly care if VFIO_MAP_DMA enforces that, but we do need
> a way to tell userspace "hey, you don't want to put memory here because
> it won't work well with devices".

I think we all agree on this. Exposing an API to the user space
reporting *fixed* reserved IOVA ranges is a requirement anyway. The
problem was quite clearly stated by Alex in
http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1610.0/03308.html
(VFIO_IOMMU_TYPE1_INFO_CAP_IOVA_RANGE)

I started working on this VFIO_IOMMU_TYPE1_INFO_CAP_IOVA_RANGE
capability but to me and I think according to Alex, it was a different
API from MSI_RESV.

> 
> In that case, we end up with something like your MSI_RESV capability,
> but actually specifying a virtual address range that is simply not to
> be used by MAP_DMA -- we don't say anything about MSIs. Now, taking this
> to its logical conclusion, we no longer need to distinguish between
> remappable reserved regions and fixed reserved regions in the ABI.
> Instead, we can have the kernel allocate the virtual address space for
> the remappable reserved regions (probably somewhere in the bottom 4GB)
> and expose them via the capability.


If I understand correctly you want the host to arbitrarily choose where
it puts the iovas reserved for MSI and not ask the userspace.

Well so we are back to the discussions we had in Dec 2015 (see Marc's
answer in http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.kvm.arm.devel/3858).

- So I guess you will init an iova_domain seomewhere below the 4GB to
allocate the MSIs. what size are you going to choose. Don't you have the
same need to dimension the iova range.
- we still need to assess the MSI assignment safety. How will we compute
safety for VFIO?

 This simplifies things in the
> following ways:
> 
>   * You don't need to keep track of MSI vs DMA addresses in the VFIO rbtree
right: I guess you rely on iommu_map to return an error in case the iova
is already mapped somewhere else.
>   * You don't need to try collapsing doorbells into a single region
why? at host level I guess you will init a single iova domain?
>   * You don't need a special MAP flavour to map MSI doorbells
right
>   * The ABI is reusable for PCI p2p and fixed doorbells
right

Aren't we moving the issue at user-space? Currently QEMU mach-virt
address space is fully static. Adapting mach-virt to adjust to host
constraints is not straightforward. It is simple to reject the
assignment in case of collision but more difficult to react positively.
> 
> I really think it would make your patch series both generally useful and
> an awful lot smaller, whilst leaving the door open to ABI extension on
> a case-by-case basis when we determine that it's really needed.

I would like to have a better understanding of how you assess the
security and dimension the iova domain. This is the purpose of msi
doorbell registration, which is not neat at all I acknowledge but well I
did not find any other solution and did not get any other suggestion.
Besides I think the per-cpu thing is over-engineered and this can
definitively be simplified.

VFIO part was reviewed by Alex and I don't have the impression that this
is the blocking part. besides there is on iova.c fix,
IOMMU_CAP_INTR_REMAP removal; so is it really over-complicated?

Thanks

Eric

> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> Will
> 
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