The observed (by the human eye) performance difference of early boot
between native and PV-on-Xen was just too large to not look into. As
it turns out, gaining performance back wasn't all that difficult.

While the series (re)introduces a small number of PTWR emulations on
the boot path (from phys_pte_init()), there has been a much larger
number of them post-boot. Hence I think if this was of concern, the
post-boot instances would want eliminating first.

Some of the later changes aren'r directly related to the main goal of
the series; these address aspects noticed while doing the investigation.

1: streamline set_pte_mfn()
2: restore (fix) xen_set_pte_init() behavior
3: adjust xen_set_fixmap()
4: adjust handling of the L3 user vsyscall special page table
5: there's no highmem anymore in PV mode
6: restrict PV Dom0 identity mapping

Jan

On 9/30/21 8:33 AM, Jan Beulich wrote:
> The observed (by the human eye) performance difference of early boot
> between native and PV-on-Xen was just too large to not look into. As
> it turns out, gaining performance back wasn't all that difficult.
>
> While the series (re)introduces a small number of PTWR emulations on
> the boot path (from phys_pte_init()), there has been a much larger
> number of them post-boot. Hence I think if this was of concern, the
> post-boot instances would want eliminating first.
>
> Some of the later changes aren'r directly related to the main goal of
> the series; these address aspects noticed while doing the investigation.
>
> 1: streamline set_pte_mfn()
> 2: restore (fix) xen_set_pte_init() behavior
> 3: adjust xen_set_fixmap()
> 4: adjust handling of the L3 user vsyscall special page table
> 5: there's no highmem anymore in PV mode
> 6: restrict PV Dom0 identity mapping



Applied to for-linus-5.16


-boris

On 9/30/21 8:33 AM, Jan Beulich wrote:
> The observed (by the human eye) performance difference of early boot
> between native and PV-on-Xen was just too large to not look into. As
> it turns out, gaining performance back wasn't all that difficult.
>
> While the series (re)introduces a small number of PTWR emulations on
> the boot path (from phys_pte_init()), there has been a much larger
> number of them post-boot. Hence I think if this was of concern, the
> post-boot instances would want eliminating first.
>
> Some of the later changes aren'r directly related to the main goal of
> the series; these address aspects noticed while doing the investigation.
>
> 1: streamline set_pte_mfn()
> 2: restore (fix) xen_set_pte_init() behavior
> 3: adjust xen_set_fixmap()
> 4: adjust handling of the L3 user vsyscall special page table
> 5: there's no highmem anymore in PV mode
> 6: restrict PV Dom0 identity mapping



For the series:


Reviewed-by: Boris Ostrovsky <boris.ostrovksy@oracle.com>