The Real Mode Area (RMA) is the part of memory which a guest can access
when in real (MMU off) mode. Of course, for a guest under KVM, the MMU
isn't really turned off, it's just in a special translation mode - Virtual
Real Mode Area (VRMA) - which looks like real mode in guest mode.
The mechanics of how this works when using the hash MMU (HPT) put a
constraint on the size of the RMA, which depends on the size of the
HPT. So, the latter part of spapr_setup_hpt_and_vrma() clamps the RMA
we advertise to the guest based on this VRMA limit.
There are several things wrong with this:
1) spapr_setup_hpt_and_vrma() doesn't actually clamp, it takes the minimum
of Node 0 memory size and the VRMA limit. That will *often* work the
same as clamping, but there can be other constraints on RMA size which
supersede Node 0 memory size. We have real bugs caused by this
(currently worked around in the guest kernel)
2) Some callers of spapr_setup_hpt_and_vrma() are in a situation where
we're past the point that we can actually advertise an RMA limit to the
guest
3) But most fundamentally, the VRMA limit depends on host configuration
(page size) which shouldn't be visible to the guest, but this partially
exposes it. This can cause problems with migration in certain edge
cases, although we will mostly get away with it.
In practice, this clamping is almost never applied anyway. With 64kiB
pages and the normal rules for sizing of the HPT, the theoretical VRMA
limit will be 4x(guest memory size) and so never hit. It will hit with
4kiB pages, where it will be (guest memory size)/4. However all mainstream
distro kernels for POWER have used a 64kiB page size for at least 10 years.
So, simply replace this logic with a check that the RMA we've calculated
based only on guest visible configuration will fit within the host implied
VRMA limit. This can break if running HPT guests on a host kernel with
4kiB page size. As noted that's very rare. There also exist several
possible workarounds:
* Change the host kernel to use 64kiB pages
* Use radix MMU (RPT) guests instead of HPT
* Use 64kiB hugepages on the host to back guest memory
* Increase the guest memory size so that the RMA hits one of the fixed
limits before the RMA limit. This is relatively easy on POWER8 which
has a 16GiB limit, harder on POWER9 which has a 1TiB limit.
* Use a guest NUMA configuration which artificially constrains the RMA
within the VRMA limit (the RMA must always fit within Node 0).
Previously, on KVM, we also temporarily reduced the rma_size to 256M so
that the we'd load the kernel and initrd safely, regardless of the VRMA
limit. This was a) confusing, b) could significantly limit the size of
images we could load and c) introduced a behavioural difference between
KVM and TCG. So we remove that as well.
Signed-off-by: David Gibson <david@gibson.dropbear.id.au>
Reviewed-by: Alexey Kardashevskiy <aik@ozlabs.ru>
Reviewed-by: Greg Kurz <groug@kaod.org>
===========
QEMU README
===========
QEMU is a generic and open source machine & userspace emulator and
virtualizer.
QEMU is capable of emulating a complete machine in software without any
need for hardware virtualization support. By using dynamic translation,
it achieves very good performance. QEMU can also integrate with the Xen
and KVM hypervisors to provide emulated hardware while allowing the
hypervisor to manage the CPU. With hypervisor support, QEMU can achieve
near native performance for CPUs. When QEMU emulates CPUs directly it is
capable of running operating systems made for one machine (e.g. an ARMv7
board) on a different machine (e.g. an x86_64 PC board).
QEMU is also capable of providing userspace API virtualization for Linux
and BSD kernel interfaces. This allows binaries compiled against one
architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux PPC64 ABI) to be run on a host using a
different architecture ABI (e.g. the Linux x86_64 ABI). This does not
involve any hardware emulation, simply CPU and syscall emulation.
QEMU aims to fit into a variety of use cases. It can be invoked directly
by users wishing to have full control over its behaviour and settings.
It also aims to facilitate integration into higher level management
layers, by providing a stable command line interface and monitor API.
It is commonly invoked indirectly via the libvirt library when using
open source applications such as oVirt, OpenStack and virt-manager.
QEMU as a whole is released under the GNU General Public License,
version 2. For full licensing details, consult the LICENSE file.
Building
========
QEMU is multi-platform software intended to be buildable on all modern
Linux platforms, OS-X, Win32 (via the Mingw64 toolchain) and a variety
of other UNIX targets. The simple steps to build QEMU are:
.. code-block:: shell
mkdir build
cd build
../configure
make
Additional information can also be found online via the QEMU website:
* `<https://qemu.org/Hosts/Linux>`_
* `<https://qemu.org/Hosts/Mac>`_
* `<https://qemu.org/Hosts/W32>`_
Submitting patches
==================
The QEMU source code is maintained under the GIT version control system.
.. code-block:: shell
git clone https://git.qemu.org/git/qemu.git
When submitting patches, one common approach is to use 'git
format-patch' and/or 'git send-email' to format & send the mail to the
qemu-devel@nongnu.org mailing list. All patches submitted must contain
a 'Signed-off-by' line from the author. Patches should follow the
guidelines set out in the CODING_STYLE.rst file.
Additional information on submitting patches can be found online via
the QEMU website
* `<https://qemu.org/Contribute/SubmitAPatch>`_
* `<https://qemu.org/Contribute/TrivialPatches>`_
The QEMU website is also maintained under source control.
.. code-block:: shell
git clone https://git.qemu.org/git/qemu-web.git
* `<https://www.qemu.org/2017/02/04/the-new-qemu-website-is-up/>`_
A 'git-publish' utility was created to make above process less
cumbersome, and is highly recommended for making regular contributions,
or even just for sending consecutive patch series revisions. It also
requires a working 'git send-email' setup, and by default doesn't
automate everything, so you may want to go through the above steps
manually for once.
For installation instructions, please go to
* `<https://github.com/stefanha/git-publish>`_
The workflow with 'git-publish' is:
.. code-block:: shell
$ git checkout master -b my-feature
$ # work on new commits, add your 'Signed-off-by' lines to each
$ git publish
Your patch series will be sent and tagged as my-feature-v1 if you need to refer
back to it in the future.
Sending v2:
.. code-block:: shell
$ git checkout my-feature # same topic branch
$ # making changes to the commits (using 'git rebase', for example)
$ git publish
Your patch series will be sent with 'v2' tag in the subject and the git tip
will be tagged as my-feature-v2.
Bug reporting
=============
The QEMU project uses Launchpad as its primary upstream bug tracker. Bugs
found when running code built from QEMU git or upstream released sources
should be reported via:
* `<https://bugs.launchpad.net/qemu/>`_
If using QEMU via an operating system vendor pre-built binary package, it
is preferable to report bugs to the vendor's own bug tracker first. If
the bug is also known to affect latest upstream code, it can also be
reported via launchpad.
For additional information on bug reporting consult:
* `<https://qemu.org/Contribute/ReportABug>`_
Contact
=======
The QEMU community can be contacted in a number of ways, with the two
main methods being email and IRC
* `<mailto:qemu-devel@nongnu.org>`_
* `<https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/qemu-devel>`_
* #qemu on irc.oftc.net
Information on additional methods of contacting the community can be
found online via the QEMU website:
* `<https://qemu.org/Contribute/StartHere>`_