linux/arch
Jan Kiszka 3b86cd9967 KVM: VMX: work around lacking VNMI support
Older VMX supporting CPUs do not provide the "Virtual NMI" feature for
tracking the NMI-blocked state after injecting such events. For now
KVM is unable to inject NMIs on those CPUs.

Derived from Sheng Yang's suggestion to use the IRQ window notification
for detecting the end of NMI handlers, this patch implements virtual
NMI support without impact on the host's ability to receive real NMIs.
The downside is that the given approach requires some heuristics that
can cause NMI nesting in vary rare corner cases.

The approach works as follows:
 - inject NMI and set a software-based NMI-blocked flag
 - arm the IRQ window start notification whenever an NMI window is
   requested
 - if the guest exits due to an opening IRQ window, clear the emulated
   NMI-blocked flag
 - if the guest net execution time with NMI-blocked but without an IRQ
   window exceeds 1 second, force NMI-blocked reset and inject anyway

This approach covers most practical scenarios:
 - succeeding NMIs are seperated by at least one open IRQ window
 - the guest may spin with IRQs disabled (e.g. due to a bug), but
   leaving the NMI handler takes much less time than one second
 - the guest does not rely on strict ordering or timing of NMIs
   (would be problematic in virtualized environments anyway)

Successfully tested with the 'nmi n' monitor command, the kgdbts
testsuite on smp guests (additional patches required to add debug
register support to kvm) + the kernel's nmi_watchdog=1, and a Siemens-
specific board emulation (+ guest) that comes with its own NMI
watchdog mechanism.

Signed-off-by: Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@siemens.com>
Signed-off-by: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>
2008-12-31 16:51:43 +02:00
..
alpha alpha: remove dead BIO_VMERGE_BOUNDARY 2008-12-29 08:29:51 +01:00
arm Merge branch 'devel' of master.kernel.org:/home/rmk/linux-2.6-arm 2008-12-30 17:36:49 -08:00
avr32 avr32: favr-32 build fix 2008-12-18 16:22:13 +01:00
blackfin kbuild: use KECHO convenience echo 2008-12-03 21:32:01 +01:00
cris [CRIS] Remove links from CRIS build 2008-10-31 23:37:57 +01:00
frv frv: fix mmap2 error handling 2008-12-01 19:55:24 -08:00
h8300 Merge branch 'for-upstream' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dvrabel/uwb 2008-10-23 08:20:34 -07:00
ia64 Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next-2.6 2008-12-28 12:49:40 -08:00
m32r Merge branch 'sched/urgent' into sched/core 2008-12-08 13:52:00 +01:00
m68k m68k: fix trigraph ignored warning in setox.S 2008-12-28 20:00:05 +01:00
m68knommu container freezer: implement freezer cgroup subsystem 2008-10-20 08:52:34 -07:00
mips Merge branch 'sched-core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip 2008-12-28 12:27:58 -08:00
mn10300 MN10300: Give correct size when reserving interrupt vector table 2008-12-10 13:34:33 -08:00
parisc Merge branch 'next' into for-linus 2008-12-25 11:40:09 +11:00
powerpc Merge branch 'core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip 2008-12-30 16:10:19 -08:00
s390 Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/rusty/linux-2.6-for-linus 2008-12-30 17:37:25 -08:00
sh Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git390.osdl.marist.edu/pub/scm/linux-2.6 2008-12-28 12:33:21 -08:00
sparc Merge branch 'master' of master.kernel.org:/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6 2008-12-28 20:19:47 -08:00
um Merge branch 'core-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/linux-2.6-tip 2008-12-30 16:10:19 -08:00
x86 KVM: VMX: work around lacking VNMI support 2008-12-31 16:51:43 +02:00
xtensa xtensa: Kill directly reference of netdev->priv 2008-12-04 15:06:56 -08:00
.gitignore
Kconfig oprofile: select RING_BUFFER 2008-12-12 09:46:31 +01:00