[PATCH 00/17] IOMMU: superpage support when not sharing pagetables

Jan Beulich posted 17 patches 2 years, 8 months ago
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[PATCH 00/17] IOMMU: superpage support when not sharing pagetables
Posted by Jan Beulich 2 years, 8 months ago
For a long time we've been rather inefficient with IOMMU page table
management when not sharing page tables, i.e. in particular for PV (and
further specifically also for PV Dom0) and AMD (where nowadays we never
share page tables). While up to about 2.5 years ago AMD code had logic
to un-shatter page mappings, that logic was ripped out for being buggy
(XSA-275 plus follow-on).

This series enables use of large pages in AMD and Intel (VT-d) code;
Arm is presently not in need of any enabling as pagetables are always
shared there. It also augments PV Dom0 creation with suitable explicit
IOMMU mapping calls to facilitate use of large pages there without
getting into the business of un-shattering page mappings just yet.
Depending on the amount of memory handed to Dom0 this improves booting
time (latency until Dom0 actually starts) quite a bit; subsequent
shattering of some of the large pages may of course consume some of the
saved time.

Parts of this series functionally depend on the previously submitted
"VT-d: fix caching mode IOTLB flushing".

Known fallout has been spelled out here:
https://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2021-08/msg00781.html

I'm inclined to say "of course" there are also various seemingly
unrelated changes included here, which I just came to consider necessary
or at least desirable (in part for having been in need of adjustment for
a long time) along the way. Some of these changes are likely independent
of the bulk of the work here, and hence may be fine to go in ahead of
earlier patches.

While, as said above, un-shattering of mappings isn't an immediate goal,
I intend to at least arrange for freeing page tables which have ended up
all empty. But that's not part of this v1 of the series.

01: AMD/IOMMU: avoid recording each level's MFN when walking page table
02: AMD/IOMMU: have callers specify the target level for page table walks
03: VT-d: have callers specify the target level for page table walks
04: IOMMU: have vendor code announce supported page sizes
05: IOMMU: add order parameter to ->{,un}map_page() hooks
06: IOMMU: have iommu_{,un}map() split requests into largest possible chunks
07: IOMMU/x86: restrict IO-APIC mappings for PV Dom0
08: IOMMU/x86: perform PV Dom0 mappings in batches
09: IOMMU/x86: support freeing of pagetables
10: AMD/IOMMU: drop stray TLB flush
11: AMD/IOMMU: walk trees upon page fault
12: AMD/IOMMU: return old PTE from {set,clear}_iommu_pte_present()
13: AMD/IOMMU: allow use of superpage mappings
14: VT-d: allow use of superpage mappings
15: IOMMU: page table dumping adjustments
16: VT-d: show permissions during page table walks
17: IOMMU/x86: drop pointless NULL checks

While not directly related (except that making this mode work properly
here was a fair part of the overall work), at this occasion I'd also
like to renew my proposal to make "iommu=dom0-strict" the default going
forward. It already is not only the default, but the only possible mode
for PVH Dom0.

Jan


Re: [PATCH 00/17] IOMMU: superpage support when not sharing pagetables
Posted by Jan Beulich 2 years, 8 months ago
On 24.08.2021 16:13, Jan Beulich wrote:
> For a long time we've been rather inefficient with IOMMU page table
> management when not sharing page tables, i.e. in particular for PV (and
> further specifically also for PV Dom0) and AMD (where nowadays we never
> share page tables). While up to about 2.5 years ago AMD code had logic
> to un-shatter page mappings, that logic was ripped out for being buggy
> (XSA-275 plus follow-on).
> 
> This series enables use of large pages in AMD and Intel (VT-d) code;
> Arm is presently not in need of any enabling as pagetables are always
> shared there. It also augments PV Dom0 creation with suitable explicit
> IOMMU mapping calls to facilitate use of large pages there without
> getting into the business of un-shattering page mappings just yet.
> Depending on the amount of memory handed to Dom0 this improves booting
> time (latency until Dom0 actually starts) quite a bit; subsequent
> shattering of some of the large pages may of course consume some of the
> saved time.
> 
> Parts of this series functionally depend on the previously submitted
> "VT-d: fix caching mode IOTLB flushing".
> 
> Known fallout has been spelled out here:
> https://lists.xen.org/archives/html/xen-devel/2021-08/msg00781.html
> 
> I'm inclined to say "of course" there are also various seemingly
> unrelated changes included here, which I just came to consider necessary
> or at least desirable (in part for having been in need of adjustment for
> a long time) along the way. Some of these changes are likely independent
> of the bulk of the work here, and hence may be fine to go in ahead of
> earlier patches.
> 
> While, as said above, un-shattering of mappings isn't an immediate goal,
> I intend to at least arrange for freeing page tables which have ended up
> all empty. But that's not part of this v1 of the series.
> 
> 01: AMD/IOMMU: avoid recording each level's MFN when walking page table
> 02: AMD/IOMMU: have callers specify the target level for page table walks
> 03: VT-d: have callers specify the target level for page table walks
> 04: IOMMU: have vendor code announce supported page sizes
> 05: IOMMU: add order parameter to ->{,un}map_page() hooks
> 06: IOMMU: have iommu_{,un}map() split requests into largest possible chunks
> 07: IOMMU/x86: restrict IO-APIC mappings for PV Dom0
> 08: IOMMU/x86: perform PV Dom0 mappings in batches
> 09: IOMMU/x86: support freeing of pagetables
> 10: AMD/IOMMU: drop stray TLB flush
> 11: AMD/IOMMU: walk trees upon page fault
> 12: AMD/IOMMU: return old PTE from {set,clear}_iommu_pte_present()
> 13: AMD/IOMMU: allow use of superpage mappings
> 14: VT-d: allow use of superpage mappings

I should probably spell this out explicitly: These last two, which actually
enable use of superpages, and which hence introduce the need to shatter
some, comes with the risk of tripping code like this

	ret = xenmem_reservation_decrease(nr_pages, frame_list);
	BUG_ON(ret != nr_pages);

still found e.g. in up-to-date Linux. This is - similar to the other
fallout description pointed at further up - a result of now potentially
needing to allocate memory in order to free some, and perhaps the needed
amount being higher than the freed one.

Jan