Message-ID: <5224B608.3080303@redhat.com>
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2013 18:00:08 +0200
From: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
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To: Gleb Natapov <gleb@redhat.com>
CC: Xiao Guangrong <xiaoguangrong@linux.vnet.ibm.com>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, kvm@vger.kernel.org, glin@suse.de,
        agraf@suse.de, brogers@suse.de, afaerber@suse.de, lnussel@suse.de,
        edk2-devel@lists.sf.net, stable@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] KVM: mmu: allow page tables to be in read-only slots
References: <1377866497-3866-1-git-send-email-pbonzini@redhat.com> <5224584F.6010409@linux.vnet.ibm.com> <20130902092518.GN22899@redhat.com>
In-Reply-To: <20130902092518.GN22899@redhat.com>
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Il 02/09/2013 11:25, Gleb Natapov ha scritto:
> On Mon, Sep 02, 2013 at 05:20:15PM +0800, Xiao Guangrong wrote:
>> On 08/30/2013 08:41 PM, Paolo Bonzini wrote:
>>> Page tables in a read-only memory slot will currently cause a triple
>>> fault because the page walker uses gfn_to_hva and it fails on such a slot.
>>>
>>> OVMF uses such a page table; however, real hardware seems to be fine with
>>> that as long as the accessed/dirty bits are set.  Save whether the slot
>>> is readonly, and later check it when updating the accessed and dirty bits.
>>
>> Paolo, do you know why OVMF is using readonly memory like this?
>>
> Just a guess, but perhaps they want to move to paging mode as early as
> possible even before memory controller is fully initialized.

More precisely they want to move to 64-bit mode as early as possible,
and that requires paging.

>> AFAIK, The fault trigged by this kind of access can hardly be fixed by
>> userspace since the fault is trigged by pagetable walking not by the current
>> instruction. Do you have any idea to let uerspace emulate it properly?
>
> Not sure what userspace you mean here, but there shouldn't be a fault in the
> first place if ROM page tables have access/dirty bit set and they do.

Yep.  Actually they do not set dirty on the PD/PDP/PML4, only on the
bottom level (which is also fine).

Paolo

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