Re: [RFC PATCH V3 2/4] KVM: X86: Introduce role.glevel for level expanded pagetable

[Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>]

On 4/13/22 16:42, Sean Christopherson wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 13, 2022, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>> On 4/12/22 23:31, Sean Christopherson wrote:
>>> We don't need 4 bits for this.  Crossing our fingers that we never had to shadow
>>> a 2-level guest with a 6-level host, we can do:
>>>
>>> 		unsigned passthrough_delta:2;
>>>
>> Basically, your passthrough_delta is level - glevel in Jiangshan's patches.
>> You'll need 3 bits anyway when we remove direct later (that would be
>> passthrough_delta == level).
> 
> Are we planning on removing direct?

I think so, it's redundant and the code almost always checks 
direct||passthrough (which would be passthrough_delta > 0 with your scheme).

>> Regarding the naming:
>>
>> * If we keep Jiangshan's logic, I don't like the glevel name very much, any
>> of mapping_level, target_level or direct_level would be clearer?
> 
> I don't love any of these names, especially glevel, because the field doesn't
> strictly track the guest/mapping/target/direct level.  That could obviously be
> remedied by making it valid at all times, but then the role would truly need 3
> bits (on top of direct) to track 5-level guest paging.

Yes, it would need 3 bits but direct can be removed.

>> * If we go with yours, I would call the field "passthrough_levels".
> 
> Hmm, it's not a raw level though.

Hence the plural. :)

Paolo