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Re: [Xen-devel] Error restoring DomU when using GPLPV

To: Keir Fraser <keir.fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] Error restoring DomU when using GPLPV
From: Mukesh Rathor <mukesh.rathor@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 2009 12:14:20 -0700
Cc: Joshua West <jwest@xxxxxxxxxxxx>, Dan Magenheimer <dan.magenheimer@xxxxxxxxxx>, James Harper <james.harper@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "Kurt C. Hackel" <kurt.hackel@xxxxxxxxxx>, "annie.li@xxxxxxxxxx" <annie.li@xxxxxxxxxx>, xen-devel <xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, "wayne.gong@xxxxxxxxxx" <wayne.gong@xxxxxxxxxx>
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Keir Fraser wrote:
On 15/09/2009 03:25, "Mukesh Rathor" <mukesh.rathor@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Ok, I've been looking at this and figured what's going on. Annie's problem
lies in not remapping the grant frames post migration. Hence the leak,
tot_pages goes up every time until migration fails. On linux, remapping
is where the frames created by restore (for heap pfn's), get freed back to
the dom heap, is what I found.  So that's a fix to be made on win
pv driver side.

Although obviosuly that is a bug, I'm not sure why it would cause this
particular issue? The domheap pages do not get freed and replaced with
xenheap pages, but why does that affect the next save/restore cycle? After
all, xc_domain_save does not distinguish between Xenheap and domheap pages?

xc_domain_save doesn't distinguish is actually the problem, as
xc_domain_restore then backs xenheap pfn's for shinfo/gnt frames with dom
heap pages. These dom heap pages do get freed and replaced by xenheap pages
on target host (upon guest remap in gnttab_map()) in following code:

arch_memory_op():
        /* Remove previously mapped page if it was present. */
        prev_mfn = gmfn_to_mfn(d, xatp.gpfn);
        if ( mfn_valid(prev_mfn) )
        {
                .....
                guest_remove_page(d, xatp.gpfn);  <=======
        }

Eg. my guest with 128M gets created with tot_pages=0x83eb
max_pages:0x8400. Now xc_domain_save saves all, 0x83eb+shinfo+gnt
frames(2), so I see tot_pages on target go upto 0x83ee. Now, guest
remaps() shinfo and gnt frames. The dom heap pages are returned in
guest_remove_page(), tot_pages goes back to 0x83eb. In Annie's case,
driver forgets to remap the 2 gnt frames, so dom heap pages are wrongly
mapped and tot_pages remains at 0x83ed, and after few more when it reaches
0x83ff, migration fails as save is not be able to create
0x83ff+shinfo+gntframes temporarily, max_page being 0x8400.

Hope that makes sense.


1. Always balloon down, shinfo+gnttab frames: This needs to be done just
    once during load, right? I'm not sure how it would work tho if mem gets
    ballooned up subsequently. I suppose the driver will have to intercept
    every increase in reservation and balloon down everytime?

Well, it is the same driver that is doing the ballooning, so it's kind of
easy to intercept, right? Just need to track how many Xenheap pages are
mapped and maintain that amount of 'balloon down'.

Yup, that's what I thought, but just wanted to make sure.

    Also, balloon down during suspend call would prob be too late, right?

Indeed it would. Need to do it during boot. It's only a few pages though, so
noone will miss them.

2. libxc fix: I wonder how much work this will be. Good thing here is,
    it'll take care of both linux and PV HVM guests avoiding driver
    updates in many versions, and hence appealing to us. Can we somehow
    mark the frames special to be skipped? Looking at biiig xc_domain_save
    function, not sure in case of HVM, how pfn_type gets set. May be before
the
    outer loop, it could ask hyp for all xen heap page list, but then what if
a
    new page gets added to the list in between.....

It's a pain. Pfn_type[] I think doesn't really get used. Xc_domain_save()
just tries to map PFNs and saves all the ones it successfully maps. So the
problem is it is allowed to map Xenheap pages. But we can't always disallow
that because sometimes the tools have good reason to map Xenheap pages. So
we'd need a new hypercall, or a flag, or something, and that would need dom0
kernel changes as well as Xen and toolstack changes. So it's rather a pain.

Ok got it, I think driver change is the way to go.

Also, unfortunately, the failure case is not handled properly sometimes.
If migration fails after suspend, then no way to get the guest
back. I even noticed, the guest disappeared totally from both source and
target when failed, couple times of several dozen migrations I did.

That shouldn't happen since there is a mechanism to cancel the suspension of
a suspended guest. Possibly xend doesn't get it right every time, as it's
error handling is pretty poor in general. I trust the underlying mechanisms
below xend pretty well however.

 -- Keir


thanks a lot,
Mukesh

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