[Xen-devel] Enabling vm_event for a guest with more VCPUs than available ring buffer slots freezes the virtual machine

[Razvan Cojocaru <rcojocaru@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

Setting, e.g. 16 VCPUs for a HVM guest, ends up blocking the guest
completely when subscribing to vm_events, apparently because of this
code in xen/common/vm_event.c:

315     /* Give this vCPU a black eye if necessary, on the way out.
316      * See the comments above wake_blocked() for more information
317      * on how this mechanism works to avoid waiting. */
318     avail_req = vm_event_ring_available(ved);
319     if( current->domain == d && avail_req < d->max_vcpus )
320         vm_event_mark_and_pause(current, ved);

It would appear that even if the guest only has 2 online VCPUs, the
"avail_req < d->max_vcpus" condition will pause current, and we
eventually end up with all the VCPUs paused.

An ugly hack ("avail_req < 2") has allowed booting a guest with many
VCPUs (max_vcpus, the guest only brings 2 VCPUs online), however that's
just to prove that that was the culprit - a real solution to this needs
more in-depth understading of the issue and potential solution. That's
basically very old code (pre-2012 at least) that got moved around into
the current shape of Xen today - please CC anyone relevant to the
discussion that you're aware of.

Thoughts?


Thanks,
Razvan

_______________________________________________
Xen-devel mailing list
Xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
https://lists.xen.org/xen-devel