From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Srivatsa Vaddagiri Subject: Re: [PATCH RFC V4 5/5] Documentation/kvm : Add documentation on Hypercalls and features used for PV spinlock Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:41:17 +0530 Message-ID: <20120116141117.GB6019@linux.vnet.ibm.com> References: <20120114182501.8604.68416.sendpatchset@oc5400248562.ibm.com> <20120114182710.8604.22277.sendpatchset@oc5400248562.ibm.com> <4F13E739.7040300@redhat.com> <20120116094020.GA6019@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <4F13F883.5090002@redhat.com> Reply-To: Srivatsa Vaddagiri Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Jeremy Fitzhardinge , Raghavendra K T , linux-doc@vger.kernel.org, Peter Zijlstra , Jan Kiszka , Virtualization , Paul Mackerras , "H. Peter Anvin" , Stefano Stabellini , Xen , Dave Jiang , KVM , Glauber Costa , X86 , Ingo Molnar , Rik van Riel , Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk , Sasha Levin , Sedat Dilek , Thomas Gleixner , Greg Kroah-Hartman , LKML , Dave Hansen , Suzuki To: Avi Kivity Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <4F13F883.5090002@redhat.com> List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: virtualization-bounces@lists.linux-foundation.org Errors-To: virtualization-bounces@lists.linux-foundation.org List-Id: kvm.vger.kernel.org * Avi Kivity [2012-01-16 12:14:27]: > > One option is to make the kick hypercall available only when > > yield_on_hlt=1? > > It's not a good idea to tie various options together. Features should > be orthogonal. > > Can't we make it work? Just have different handling for > KVM_REQ_PVLOCK_KICK (let 's rename it, and the hypercall, PV_UNHALT, > since we can use it for non-locks too). The problem case I was thinking of was when guest VCPU would have issued HLT with interrupts disabled. I guess one option is to inject an NMI, and have the guest kernel NMI handler recognize this and make adjustments such that the vcpu avoids going back to HLT instruction. Having another hypercall to do yield/sleep (rather than effecting that via HLT) seems like an alternate clean solution here .. - vatsa