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[Xen-devel] Re: [RFC] RAS(Part II)--MCA enalbing in XEN

To me, it seems, the design has not been understood
and now, the code becomes more and more unmaintainable
bloat. I mean, the code is going to do far too much.

- The MCE routines in Xen are only for error data *collection*.
  Just pass it to Dom0 and that's it.
  Dom0 will do the error analysis and figure out what do to.
  It is the Dom0 which will do a hypercall to do things like
  page-offlining or cpu offlining or whatever is needed.
  Your code tries to move everyting back from Dom0 into the
  hypervisor. I remember Keir having rejected my MCE patches
  because he feared this bloat.

- Dom0 VIRQ is for correctable errors only. Uncorrectable errors
  are delivered via MCE trap. Dom0 and DomU register a handle
  via set_trap_table hypercall. A non-registrated handler means,
  the guest can't handle it by itself. Dom0 is always notified,
  the guest becomes only notified
  This seperation is completely ignored and misuse Dom0 VIRQ for everything
  (therefore the bunch of superflous flags (see next point))

- MCA flags: what are the differences between correctable 
  and recoverable ? what are the differences between uncorrectable,
  polled, reset and cmci and mce types ?

- You use dynamic memory allocation (which uses spinlocks) in MCE code
  and you roll your own mce handling instead of using the generic API in mce.c
  I suppose, you don't understand it at all.

- I attach the design document again, since I have the impression, noone
  at Intel read it, hence the misunderstandings.

I think, it is best to get Gavin's generic mce improvements upstream first.


On Monday 16 February 2009 06:35:14 Ke, Liping wrote:
> Hi, all
> These patches are for MCA enabling in XEN. It is sent as RFC firstly to
> collect some feedbacks for refinement if needed before the final patch. We
> also attach one description txt documents for your reference.
>
> Some implementation notes:
> 1) When error happens, if the error is fatal (pcc = 1) or can't be
> recovered (pcc = 0, yet no good recovery methods), for avoiding losing logs
> in DOM0, we will reset machine immediately. Most of MCA MSRs are sticky.
> After reboot, MCA polling mechanism will send vIRQ to DOM0 for logging.
> 2) When MCE# happens, all CPUs enter MCA context. The first CPU who
> read&clear the error MSR bank will be this MCE# owner. Necessary
> locks/synchronization will help to judge the owner and select most severe
> error. 3) For convenience, we will select the most offending CPU to do most
> of processing&recovery job. 4) MCE# happens, we will do three jobs:
>     a. Send vIRQ to DOM0 for logging
>     b. Send vMCE# to Impacted Guest (Currently Only inject to impacted
> DOM0) c. Guest vMCE MSR virtualization
> 5) Some further improvement/adds might be done if needed:
>     a) Impacted DOM judgement algorithm.
>     b) Now vMCE# injection is controlled by centralized data(vmce_data).
> The injection algorithm is a bit complex. We might change the algorithm
> which's based on PER_DOM data if you preferred. Notes for understanding:
>         1) If several banks impact one domain, yet those banks belong to
> the same pCPU, it will be injected only once. 2) If more than one bank
> impact one domain, yet error banks belong to different pCPU, ith will be
> injected nr_num(pCPU) times. 3) We use centralized data [two arrays
> impact_domid, impact_cpus map in vmce_data] to represent the injection
> algorithm. Combined the two array item (idx, impact_domid) and (idx,
> impact_cpus) into one item (idx, impact_domid, impact_cpus). This item
> records the impact_domain id and the error pCPU map (Finding UC errors on
> this CPU which impact this domain). Then, we can judge how to inject the
> vMCE (domid, impact_times[nr_pCPUs]).
>         4) Although data structure is ready, we only inject vMCE# to DOMD0
> currently. c) Connection with recovery actions (cpu/memory online/offline)
> d) More refines and tests for HVM might be done when needed.
>
> Patch Description:
> 1. basic_mca_support: Enable MCA support in XEN.
> 2. vmsr_virtualization: Guest MCE# MSR read/write virtualization support in
> XEN. 3. mce_dom0: Cooperating with XEN, DOM0 add vIRQ and vMCE# handler.
> Translate XEN log to DOM0, re-use Linux kernel and MCELOG mechanisms and
> MCE handler. This is mainly a demonstration patch.
>
> About Test:
> We did some internal test and the result is just fine.
>
> Any feedback is welcome and thanks a lot for your help! :-)
> Regards,
> Criping



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Attachment: xen_mca.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document

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