Re: disabling halt polling broken? (was Re: [PATCH 00/14] KVM: Halt-polling fixes, cleanups and a new stat)

From: Sean Christopherson <seanjc@google.com>
To: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
Cc: Christian Borntraeger <borntraeger@de.ibm.com>,
	David Matlack <dmatlack@google.com>,
	Jon Cargille <jcargill@google.com>,
	Jim Mattson <jmattson@google.com>,
	James Morse <james.morse@arm.com>,
	Alexandru Elisei <alexandru.elisei@arm.com>,
	Suzuki K Poulose <suzuki.poulose@arm.com>,
	David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>,
	Cornelia Huck <cohuck@redhat.com>,
	Claudio Imbrenda <imbrenda@linux.ibm.com>,
	Vitaly Kuznetsov <vkuznets@redhat.com>,
	Wanpeng Li <wanpengli@tencent.com>,
	Joerg Roedel <joro@8bytes.org>,
	linux-arm-kernel <linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org>,
	KVM ARM <kvmarm@lists.cs.columbia.edu>,
	"open list:MIPS" <linux-mips@vger.kernel.org>,
	kvm <kvm@vger.kernel.org>, kvm-ppc <kvm-ppc@vger.kernel.org>,
	"Kernel Mailing List, Linux" <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Jing Zhang <jingzhangos@google.com>,
	Marc Zyngier <maz@kernel.org>,
	Huacai Chen <chenhuacai@kernel.org>,
	Aleksandar Markovic <aleksandar.qemu.devel@gmail.com>,
	Paul Mackerras <paulus@ozlabs.org>,
	Janosch Frank <frankja@linux.ibm.com>
Subject: Re: disabling halt polling broken? (was Re: [PATCH 00/14] KVM: Halt-polling fixes, cleanups and a new stat)
Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2021 17:33:41 +0000	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <YVIAdVxc+q2UWB+J@google.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABgObfYtS6wiQe=BhF3t5usr7J6q4PWE4=rwZMMukfC9wT_6fA@mail.gmail.com>

On Mon, Sep 27, 2021, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 5:17 PM Christian Borntraeger
> <borntraeger@de.ibm.com> wrote:
> > > So I think there are two possibilities that makes sense:
> > >
> > > * track what is using KVM_CAP_HALT_POLL, and make writes to halt_poll_ns follow that
> >
> > what about using halt_poll_ns for those VMs that did not uses KVM_CAP_HALT_POLL and the private number for those that did.
> 
> Yes, that's what I meant.  David pointed out that doesn't allow you to
> disable halt polling altogether, but for that you can always ask each
> VM's userspace one by one, or just not use KVM_CAP_HALT_POLL. (Also, I
> don't know about Google's usecase, but mine was actually more about
> using KVM_CAP_HALT_POLL to *disable* halt polling on some VMs!).

I kinda like the idea if special-casing halt_poll_ns=0, e.g. for testing or
in-the-field mitigation if halt-polling is broken.  It'd be trivial to support, e.g.

@@ -3304,19 +3304,23 @@ void kvm_vcpu_halt(struct kvm_vcpu *vcpu)
                update_halt_poll_stats(vcpu, start, poll_end, !waited);

        if (halt_poll_allowed) {
+               max_halt_poll_ns = vcpu->kvm->max_halt_poll_ns;
+               if (!max_halt_poll_ns || !halt_poll_ns)  <------ squish the max if halt_poll_ns==0
+                       max_halt_poll_ns = halt_poll_ns;
+
                if (!vcpu_valid_wakeup(vcpu)) {
                        shrink_halt_poll_ns(vcpu);
-               } else if (vcpu->kvm->max_halt_poll_ns) {
+               } else if (max_halt_poll_ns) {
                        if (halt_ns <= vcpu->halt_poll_ns)
                                ;
                        /* we had a long block, shrink polling */
                        else if (vcpu->halt_poll_ns &&
-                                halt_ns > vcpu->kvm->max_halt_poll_ns)
+                                halt_ns > max_halt_poll_ns)
                                shrink_halt_poll_ns(vcpu);
                        /* we had a short halt and our poll time is too small */
-                       else if (vcpu->halt_poll_ns < vcpu->kvm->max_halt_poll_ns &&
-                                halt_ns < vcpu->kvm->max_halt_poll_ns)
-                               grow_halt_poll_ns(vcpu);
+                       else if (vcpu->halt_poll_ns < max_halt_poll_ns &&
+                                halt_ns < max_halt_poll_ns)
+                               grow_halt_poll_ns(vcpu, max_halt_poll_ns);
                } else {
                        vcpu->halt_poll_ns = 0;
                }
