[PATCH 00/19] Handle guest-generated SErrors/Aborts

Marc Zyngier marc.zyngier at arm.com
Thu Sep 8 02:55:36 PDT 2016


On 08/09/16 10:44, Christoffer Dall wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 06, 2016 at 02:01:58PM +0100, Marc Zyngier wrote:
>> A little known "feature" of giving guest access to real memory mapped
>> HW is that it could trigger asynchronous aborts (SError on ARMv8) if
>> the guest accesses it in a non-conventional way (and depending on how
>> HW and firmware have been integrated). So far, KVM lacks any support
>> to handle this gracefully.
>>
>> This series introduces a set of mechanisms to catch such a fault and
>> deliver a vSError (or Virtual Abort for 32bit) to the offending vcpu.
>>
>> These aborts can either trigger at EL1 (whilst the guest is running),
>> or at EL2 (during the handling of an exit). The first case is pretty
>> easy to handle (use the ad-hoc vectors on arm64, or decode the EA bit
>> on arm), but the second one is a bit more fiddly, as we need to ensure
>> that the exception is pending by the time we unmask it. This is
>> achived by using some heavy DSBs on the hot path, with the following
>> caveats:
>>
>> - I've only been able to trigger the EL2 handling on A57 (Seatle,
>>   Juno).
>> - I've measured a 40/50 cycles hit on Juno (A57), but I haven't
>>   measured the impact on bigger systems
>>
>> The last patch of this series adds a missing feature to the
>> GICV-proxying series, delivering a vSError to a guest that performed
>> an illegal access to the GIC.
>>
>> Patches on top of current kvmarm/queue + the GICV przying series.
> 
> przying?  proxying?  Or something in Polish perhaps?

Proxying, with added fat fingers... ;-)

> 
> For the series:
> Reviewed-by: Christoffer Dall <christoffer.dall at linaro.org>

Thanks!

	M.
-- 
Jazz is not dead. It just smells funny...



More information about the linux-arm-kernel mailing list