This series can be found on GitHub:
https://github.com/dmatlack/linux/tree/liveupdate/pci/base/v6
This series introduces initial support in the PCI core for Live Update,
enabling drivers to preserve PCI devices across a kexec-based kernel
update without interrupting the device. This functionality is critical
for minimizing downtime in environments where PCI devices (e.g., those
assigned to VMs via VFIO) must continue operating or maintain state
across a host kernel upgrade.
Specifically, this series allows preserved PCI devices to perform
uninterrupted memory transactions (DMA) to/from system memory across a
Live Update. These devices can be behind a bridge but must not be VFs.
Support for P2P and VF preservation will be addressed in future series.
Series Overview
---------------
This series implements the following to support PCI device preservation
across Live Update:
1. Set up a File-Lifecycle-Bound (FLB) handler to track and preserve
PCI-specific state (struct pci_ser) across Live Update using Kexec
Handover (KHO).
2. Add APIs for drivers to register outgoing-preserved devices for
preservation and for the PCI core to identify incoming-preserved
devices during enumeration.
3. Automatically preserve all upstream bridges for any preserved
endpoint. Use reference counting to ensure bridges remain preserved
as long as any downstream device is preserved.
4. Guarantee that preserved devices retain the same RequesterID (bus,
device, function) for the duration of their preservation by
inheriting secondary bus numbers, subordinate bus numbers, and ARI
Forwarding Enable on preserved bridges.
5. Guarantee that memory transactions to/from preserved devices are
routed consistently by inheriting Access Control Services (ACS)
flags across a Live Update, from the endpoint up to the root port.
6. Modify the PCI shutdown path to avoid disabling bus mastering on
preserved devices, thereby allowing preserved devices to perform
uninterrupted during kexec for Live Update.
7. Provide comprehensive documentation for the FLB API, device
tracking mechanisms, and the division of responsibilities between
the PCI core, drivers, and userspace.
Dependencies
------------
This series is built on top of the next branch of the liveupdate.git
tree, which includes two commits to enable refcounting the incoming FLB:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/liveupdate/linux.git/log/?h=next
Testing
-------
This series was tested in conjunction with v4 of the VFIO PCI driver
series:
https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20260511234802.2280368-1-vipinsh@google.com/
The full set of patches used for testing can be found on GitHub:
https://github.com/dmatlack/linux/tree/liveupdate/pci/base/v6-with-vfio
Testing was performed using the new VFIO selftests:
- vfio_pci_liveupdate_uapi_test
- vfio_pci_liveupdate_kexec_test
Both tests were run in a QEMU-based VM environment (using a single
virtio-net PCIe device connected to a root port to exercise bridge
support) and on bare metal using an Intel EMR server with 8x Intel DSA
PCIe devices and 1x NVMe device.
Future Work
-----------
Following this series, we expect to make further improvements to the PCI
core support for Live Update:
- Allow P2P across Live Update by avoiding resizing or moving
preserved device BARs and preserving all upstream bridge windows.
- Support preserving Virtual Functions by preserving SR-IOV
configuration on PFs and enumerating VFs after Live Update.
Changelog
---------
v6:
- Fix truncated domain during bit shift in pci_ser_xa_key() (Sashiko)
- Replace complex and buggy per-device locks and outgoing mutex with a
single rwsem (me)
- Use a loop instead of recursion to walk upstream bridges (Sashiko)
- Correctly account for all devices that need quirks to enable ACS
instead of relying on PCI_DEV_FLAGS_ACS_ENABLED_QUIRK. This required
adding a patch to refactor pci_dev_acs_ops in quirks.c (Sashiko)
- Fix circular locking dependency between pci_rescan_remove_lock and
pci_liveupdate_flb.private->incoming.lock (me)
- Convert several functions to return 0/error instead of true/false.
- Bump PCI_LUO_FLB_COMPATIBLE in the patch that changes the semantics
of pci_dev_ser.refcount (me)
- Convert was_prepared and frozen from bitfields to bools to avoid
KCSAN warnings (Sashiko)
- Drop experimental verbiage from Kconfig and Documentation (me)
- Ensure that bridges inherit bus numbers during scanning if their
parent bridge also inherits bus numbers. Otherwise, a race between a
scan and pci_liveupdate_finish() could result in a bridge assigning a
bus window larger than its parent while its parent is forced to
inherit bus numbers (i.e., cannot expand) (me)
- Free struct pci_ser if an error occurs during pci_flb_retrieve()
(Sashiko)
- Detect duplicate entries in incoming FLB when constructing xarray and
return an error instead of silently ignoring (me)
- Add a wrapper function for fetching from the outgoing FLB (me)
- Grammatical and spelling fixes (Bjorn)
- Don't bother forcing bus inheritance when only outgoing devices are
preserved. If a scan causes a bus number conflict, that is a general
PCI core bug; it is not specific to Live Update (me)
- Convert bitfields in struct pci_liveupdate to bools to avoid data
races (me)
v5: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20260512184846.119396-1-dmatlack@google.com/
v4: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20260423212316.3431746-1-dmatlack@google.com/
v3: https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20260323235817.1960573-1-dmatlack@google.com/
v2: https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20260129212510.967611-1-dmatlack@google.com/
v1: https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20251126193608.2678510-1-dmatlack@google.com/
rfc: https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/20251018000713.677779-1-vipinsh@google.com/
David Matlack (12):
PCI: liveupdate: Set up FLB handler for the PCI core
PCI: liveupdate: Track outgoing preserved PCI devices
PCI: liveupdate: Track incoming preserved PCI devices
PCI: liveupdate: Document driver binding responsibilities
PCI: liveupdate: Keep bus numbers constant during Live Update
PCI: liveupdate: Auto-preserve upstream bridges across Live Update
PCI: Refactor matching logic for pci_dev_acs_ops
PCI: liveupdate: Inherit ACS flags in incoming preserved devices
PCI: liveupdate: Inherit ARI Forwarding Enable on preserved bridges
PCI: liveupdate: Freeze preservation status during shutdown
PCI: liveupdate: Do not disable bus mastering on preserved devices
during kexec
Documentation: PCI: Add documentation for Live Update
Documentation/PCI/index.rst | 1 +
Documentation/PCI/liveupdate.rst | 29 +
.../admin-guide/kernel-parameters.txt | 6 +-
Documentation/core-api/liveupdate.rst | 1 +
MAINTAINERS | 12 +
drivers/pci/Kconfig | 15 +
drivers/pci/Makefile | 1 +
drivers/pci/liveupdate.c | 850 ++++++++++++++++++
drivers/pci/liveupdate.h | 68 ++
drivers/pci/pci-driver.c | 9 +-
drivers/pci/pci.c | 13 +-
drivers/pci/pci.h | 5 +
drivers/pci/probe.c | 22 +-
drivers/pci/quirks.c | 57 +-
include/linux/kho/abi/pci.h | 65 ++
include/linux/pci.h | 4 +
include/linux/pci_liveupdate.h | 77 ++
17 files changed, 1197 insertions(+), 38 deletions(-)
create mode 100644 Documentation/PCI/liveupdate.rst
create mode 100644 drivers/pci/liveupdate.c
create mode 100644 drivers/pci/liveupdate.h
create mode 100644 include/linux/kho/abi/pci.h
create mode 100644 include/linux/pci_liveupdate.h
base-commit: 34e8f02817e31826e76bb2ded48bf28fe921f20b
--
2.54.0.746.g67dd491aae-goog