Re: [PATCH v6 03/13] vpci: move lock outside of struct vpci

[Jan Beulich <jbeulich@suse.com>]

On 07.02.2022 17:08, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 07, 2022 at 04:26:56PM +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
>> On 07.02.2022 16:11, Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> On 07.02.22 16:35, Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On 07.02.22 16:27, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, Feb 07, 2022 at 03:11:03PM +0100, Jan Beulich wrote:
>>>>>> On 07.02.2022 14:53, Oleksandr Andrushchenko wrote:
>>>>>>> On 07.02.22 14:46, Roger Pau Monné wrote:
>>>>>>>> I think the per-domain rwlock seems like a good option. I would do
>>>>>>>> that as a pre-patch.
>>>>>>> It is. But it seems it won't solve the thing we started this adventure for:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> With per-domain read lock and still ABBA in modify_bars (hope the below
>>>>>>> is correctly seen with a monospace font):
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> cpu0: vpci_write-> d->RLock -> pdev1->lock ->                                                  rom_write -> modify_bars: tmp (pdev2) ->lock
>>>>>>> cpu1:        vpci_write-> d->RLock pdev2->lock -> cmd_write -> modify_bars: tmp (pdev1) ->lock
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There is no API to upgrade read lock to write lock in modify_bars which could help,
>>>>>>> so in both cases vpci_write should take write lock.
>>>>>> Hmm, yes, I think you're right: It's not modify_bars() itself which needs
>>>>>> to acquire the write lock, but its (perhaps indirect) caller. Effectively
>>>>>> vpci_write() would need to take the write lock if the range written
>>>>>> overlaps the BARs or the command register.
>>>>> I'm confused. If we use a per-domain rwlock approach there would be no
>>>>> need to lock tmp again in modify_bars, because we should hold the
>>>>> rwlock in write mode, so there's no ABBA?
>>>> this is only possible with what you wrote below:
>>>>> We will have however to drop the per domain read and vpci locks and
>>>>> pick the per-domain lock in write mode.
>>>> I think this is going to be unreliable. We need a reliable way to
>>>> upgrade read lock to write lock.
>>>> Then, we can drop pdev->vpci_lock at all, because we are always
>>>> protected with d->rwlock and those who want to free pdev->vpci
>>>> will use write lock.
>>>>
>>>> So, per-domain rwlock with write upgrade implemented minus pdev->vpci
>>>> should do the trick
>>> Linux doesn't implement write upgrade and it seems for a reason [1]:
>>> "Also, you cannot “upgrade” a read-lock to a write-lock, so if you at _any_ time
>>> need to do any changes (even if you don’t do it every time), you have to get
>>> the write-lock at the very beginning."
>>>
>>> So, I am not sure we can have the same for Xen...
>>>
>>> At the moment I see at least two possible ways to solve the issue:
>>> 1. Make vpci_write use write lock, thus make all write accesses synchronized
>>> for the given domain, read are fully parallel
>>
>> 1b. Make vpci_write use write lock for writes to command register and BARs
>> only; keep using the read lock for all other writes.
> 
> We do not support writing to the BARs with memory decoding enabled
> currently for dom0, so we would only need to pick the lock in write
> mode for the command register and ROM BAR write handler AFAICT.

Oh, right - this then makes for even less contention due to needing to
acquire the lock in write mode.

Jan