qemu-devel
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: [PATCH 0/6] Add debug interface to kick/call on purpose


From: Jason Wang
Subject: Re: [PATCH 0/6] Add debug interface to kick/call on purpose
Date: Fri, 2 Apr 2021 11:47:34 +0800
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.15; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.9.0


在 2021/3/30 下午3:29, Dongli Zhang 写道:

On 3/28/21 8:56 PM, Jason Wang wrote:
在 2021/3/27 上午5:16, Dongli Zhang 写道:
Hi Jason,

On 3/26/21 12:24 AM, Jason Wang wrote:
在 2021/3/26 下午1:44, Dongli Zhang 写道:
The virtio device/driver (e.g., vhost-scsi or vhost-net) may hang due to
the loss of doorbell kick, e.g.,

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2018-12/msg01711.html__;!!GqivPVa7Brio!KS3pAU2cKjz4wgI4QSlE-YsJPhPG71nkE5_tGhaOf7mi_xvNxbvKkfn03rk5BNDLSEU$


... or due to the loss of IRQ, e.g., as fixed by linux kernel commit
fe200ae48ef5 ("genirq: Mark polled irqs and defer the real handler").

This patch introduces a new debug interface 'DeviceEvent' to DeviceClass
to help narrow down if the issue is due to loss of irq/kick. So far the new
interface handles only two events: 'call' and 'kick'. Any device (e.g.,
virtio/vhost or VFIO) may implement the interface (e.g., via eventfd, MSI-X
or legacy IRQ).

The 'call' is to inject irq on purpose by admin for a specific device (e.g.,
vhost-scsi) from QEMU/host to VM, while the 'kick' is to kick the doorbell
on purpose by admin at QEMU/host side for a specific device.


This device can be used as a workaround if call/kick is lost due to
virtualization software (e.g., kernel or QEMU) issue.

We may also implement the interface for VFIO PCI, e.g., to write to
VFIOPCIDevice->msi_vectors[i].interrupt will be able to inject IRQ to VM
on purpose. This is considered future work once the virtio part is done.


Below is from live crash analysis. Initially, the queue=2 has count=15 for
'kick' eventfd_ctx. Suppose there is data in vring avail while there is no
used available. We suspect this is because vhost-scsi was not notified by
VM. In order to narrow down and analyze the issue, we use live crash to
dump the current counter of eventfd for queue=2.

crash> eventfd_ctx ffff8f67f6bbe700
struct eventfd_ctx {
     kref = {
       refcount = {
         refs = {
           counter = 4
         }
       }
     },
     wqh = {
       lock = {
         {
           rlock = {
             raw_lock = {
               val = {
                 counter = 0
               }
             }
           }
         }
       },
       head = {
         next = 0xffff8f841dc08e18,
         prev = 0xffff8f841dc08e18
       }
     },
     count = 15, ---> eventfd is 15 !!!
     flags = 526336
}

Now we kick the doorbell for vhost-scsi queue=2 on purpose for diagnostic
with this interface.

{ "execute": "x-debug-device-event",
     "arguments": { "dev": "/machine/peripheral/vscsi0",
                    "event": "kick", "queue": 2 } }

The counter is increased to 16. Suppose the hang issue is resolved, it
indicates something bad is in software that the 'kick' is lost.
What do you mean by "software" here? And it looks to me you're testing whether
event_notifier_set() is called by virtio_queue_notify() here. If so, I'm not
sure how much value could we gain from a dedicated debug interface like this
consider there're a lot of exisinting general purpose debugging method like
tracing or gdb. I'd say the path from virtio_queue_notify() to
event_notifier_set() is only a very small fraction of the process of virtqueue
kick which is unlikey to be buggy. Consider usually the ioeventfd will be
offloaded to KVM, it's more a chance that something is wrong in setuping
ioeventfd instead of here. Irq is even more complicated.
Thank you very much!

I am not testing whether event_notifier_set() is called by 
virtio_queue_notify().

The 'software' indicates the data processing and event notification mechanism
involved with virtio/vhost PV driver frontend. E.g., while VM is waiting for an
extra IRQ, vhost side did not trigger IRQ, suppose vring_need_event()
erroneously returns false due to corrupted ring buffer status.

So there could be several factors that may block the notification:

1) eventfd bug (ioeventfd vs irqfd)
2) wrong virtqueue state (either driver or device)
3) missing barriers (either driver or device)
4) Qemu bug (irqchip and routing)
...
This is not only about whether notification is blocked.

It can also be used to help narrow down and understand if there is any
suspicious issue in blk-mq/scsi/netdev/napi code. The PV drivers are not only
drivers following virtio spec. It is closely related to many of other kernel
components.

Suppose IO was recovered after we inject an IRQ to vhost-scsi on purpose, we
will be able to analyze what may happen along the IO completion path starting
from when /where the IRQ is injected ... perhaps the root cause is not with
virtio but blk-mq/scsi (this is just an example).


In addition, this idea should help for vfio-pci. Suppose the developer for a
specific device driver suspects IO/networking hangs because of loss if IRQ, we
will be able to verify if that assumption is correct by injecting an IRQ on 
purpose.

Therefore, this is not only about virtio PV driver (frontend/backend), but also
used to help analyze the issue related to entire IO/networking/passthrough
virtualization stacks, especially in production env where the issue can only be
reproduced randomly.


So it looks to me you'd better having things like this in the EventNotifier layer and introduce qmp commands to write/read that instead of starting with a virtio specific commands. Or it might be even helpful to start from some counters for event notifiers which could be accessed via monitor to help to for debugging to start with which is much more safe in the environment of production. Having artifical events are always dangerous.



Consider we want to debug virtio issue, only 2) or 3) is what we really cared>
So for kick you did (assume vhost is on):

virtio_device_event_kick()
     virtio_queue_notify()
         event_notifier_set()

It looks to me you're actaully testing if ioeventfd is correctly set by Qemu.

For call you did:

virtio_device_event_call()
     event_notifier_set()

A test of irqfd is correctly set by Qemu. So all of those are not virtio
specific stuffs but you introduce virtio specific command to do debug non virtio
functions.

In the case of what you mentioned for vring_need_event(), what we really want is
to dump the virtqueue state from the guest. This might requries some work of
extending virtio spec (e.g to dump device status like indices, event, wrap
counters).
Suppose the issue is only randomly reproducible in production env, we should
always take 4) into consideration because we will not be able to know where is
the root cause at the very beginning of bug analysis.


So if it truns out to be an issue of irqchip, how will you do the debugging then? I guess what's really helpful is a qmp command to dump irqchip status/information.




This was initially proposed for vhost only and I was going to export
ioeventfd/irqfd from vhost to admin via sysfs. Finally, I realized I would
better implement this at QEMU.

The QEMU inits the eventfd (ioeventfd and irqfd), and offloads them to
KVM/vhost. The VM side sends requests to ring buffer and kicks the doorbell (via
ioeventfd), while the backend vhost side sends responses back and calls the IRQ
(via ioeventfd).

Unfortunately, sometimes there is issue with virtio/vhost so that kick/call was
missed/ignored, or even never triggered. The example mentioned in the patchset
cover letter is with virtio-net (I assume vhost=on), where a kick to ioventfd
was ignored, due to pci-bridge/hotplug issue.

So this is not a good example since it was a chipset bug. You need to use other
tool to debug chipset code isn't it?
As this issue is reproducible only randomly, we will not be able to realize it
is a chipset bug at the very beginning.

While the link is about vhost-net, it is applicable to vhost-scsi as well.
Suppose DEBUG_UNASSIGNED is not enabled, the developer will need to investigate
all of blk-mq, scsi, virtio-scsi (ioeventfd), vhost-scsi (target), pci-bridge
and pci-hotplug, in order to identify the root case.

The "call/kick" interface is used to narrow down and verify the analysis,
especially when many kernel components are involved.


The hotplug is with a very small window but the IO hangs permanently. I did test
that kicking the doorbell again will help recover the IO, so that I would be
able to conclude this was due to lost of kick.

The loss of irq/doorbell is painful especially in production environment where
we are not able to attach to QEMU via gdb. While the patchset is only for QEMU,
Xen PV driver used to experience loss of IRQ issue as well, e.g., linux kernel
commit 4704fe4f03a5 ("xen/events: mask events when changing their VCPU 
binding").

So looking at the git history we can see it has little possibility that the
missing is due to virtio/vhost itself. So the commit you mention here is not
good as well since it's not a netfront/netbackend bug.
I mentioned the xen issue just to explain that the loss of event/irq issue may
happen and is very painful. Another xen example is (equivalent to KVM VFIO):

https://xenbits.xen.org/gitweb/?p=xen.git;a=commit;h=56348df32bbc782e63b6e3fb978b80e015ae76e7


Sorry, I can't figure out how is this related to VFIO or virtio. It should be reproducible for devices without using eventfd?



That's why I mentioned this idea helps for VFIO (not only VFIO, but actually
blk-mq+nvme+pci+kvm+vfio, assuming it is for nvme passthrough) as well.

So for the case of event call, what you did is:

satic void virtio_device_event_call(VirtQueue *vq, bool eventfd,
                                      Error **errp)
{
#ifdef DEBUG_VIRTIO_EVENT
     printf("The 'call' event is triggered for path=%s, queue=%d, irqfd=%d.\n",
            object_get_canonical_path(OBJECT(vq->vdev)),
            vq->queue_index, eventfd);
#endif

     if (eventfd) {
         virtio_set_isr(vq->vdev, 0x1);
         event_notifier_set(&vq->guest_notifier);
     } else {
         virtio_irq(vq);
     }
}

This means, when eventfd is set, you bypasses the MSI mask which is very
dangerous to make it used in the case of production environment. And if you
check masking, it won't help a lot if the MSI is masked wrongly.
You are right.

Only the vhost-net is dangerous because it masks a vector by registering an
alternative masked_notifier to KVM, while virtio-blk/vhost-scsi/virtio-scsi will
un-register the guest notifier.


This can help "narrow down" if the IO/networking hang is due to loss of
IRQ/doorbell issue (or VM MSI-x is erroneously masked), especially in production
env. This can also be used as a workaround so that VM owner will not need to
reboot VM.

So having such extra workaround is pretty dangerous in production environemnt
where I think we need to be conservative which means we need to collect
information instead of generating artificial event.

And it doesn't help if the wrokaround can be triggered through management API.
I agree with this.

This depends on the administrator. This workaround should only be used in very
limited and special case.


In addition, the VFIO will benefit from it. We will be able to test if to inject
IRQ on purpose helps when the driver (e.g., PCI, NVMe, Ethernet) developers
blame the hang is caused by loss of IRQ with KVM/VFIO.(It seems there is more
chance to loose IRQ during CPU hotplug or changing IRQ affinity).

I think we could not gain much for introducing an dedicated mechanism for such a
corner case.
As replied by Dave for prior RFC, the QEMU already supports hmp_ioport_write to
trigger an ioport write on purpose.

If that applies. I would rather have a hmp_mem_write then we can test both MSI
and doorbell. But again, they are very dangerous to be used in production
envronment.
This is just not convenient for production env administrator. We will need to
first obtain the virtio pci info (e.g., via "lspci -vv"), and then prepare for
the command after calculating the address of doorbell.

Something bad may happen if the developer did not calculate the address 
correctly.


It won't be worse than hmp_ioport_write I think?



It should be much more easier for developer to just ask administrator to "call"
queue X for a specific virtio device.


We can have the commands like "info virtio" which can show all the MSI/doorbell information for user to use. Or limit its use for virtio and vfio device only to avoid unexpected result.




The linux block layer also supports the below to kick the IO queue on purpose.

echo "kick" > /sys/kernel/debug/block/sda/state

This might be fine for hardware device but not virtio. The device can choose to
poll the virtqueue instead of depending of the doorbell to work. And for
networking subsystem, we don't have such stuffs, instead ethtool support to dump
ring and vendor specific stuffs which could be used for dumping virtqueue state
in this case.
This is just another example to help explain the philosophy behind the
"kick/call" idea: sometimes to trigger the event on purpose will help us narrow
down and verify our analysis of a kernel bug, especially a bug that is only
randomly reproducible in production environment.


I understand it is possibly not proper to introduce such interface to QEMU.
That's why I used to send out the RFC.

https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2021-01/msg03441.html

In my opinion, this interface is pretty useful when the diagnostic invokes many
kernel components, or when developers from different components are working on
the same bug, no matter whether the root cause is at virtio or not.


So for virtio, it's not hard to events without those interface. E.g for networking you can generate some traffic and trace on where-ever you suspect that could block the event (kick/call).

I still prefer hmp_mem_write()/read() which looks more generic, in the same time, we can add more debug informaiton likes:

1) satistics like eventfd counters
2) device information, register layout, doorbell/MSI-X information
3) irqchip infromation

Thanks




Thank you very much!

Dongli Zhang


Thanks


Dongli Zhang

Thanks


crash> eventfd_ctx ffff8f67f6bbe700
struct eventfd_ctx {
     kref = {
       refcount = {
         refs = {
           counter = 4
         }
       }
     },
     wqh = {
       lock = {
         {
           rlock = {
             raw_lock = {
               val = {
                 counter = 0
               }
             }
           }
         }
       },
       head = {
         next = 0xffff8f841dc08e18,
         prev = 0xffff8f841dc08e18
       }
     },
     count = 16, ---> eventfd incremented to 16 !!!
     flags = 526336
}


Original RFC link:

https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://lists.nongnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2021-01/msg03441.html__;!!GqivPVa7Brio!KS3pAU2cKjz4wgI4QSlE-YsJPhPG71nkE5_tGhaOf7mi_xvNxbvKkfn03rk5UvUJ86I$


Changed since RFC:
     - add support for more virtio/vhost pci devices
     - add log (toggled by DEBUG_VIRTIO_EVENT) to virtio.c to say that this
       mischeivous command had been used
     - fix grammer error (s/lost/loss/)
     - change version to 6.1
     - fix incorrect example in qapi/qdev.json
     - manage event types with enum/array, instead of hard coding


Dongli Zhang (6):
      qdev: introduce qapi/hmp command for kick/call event
      virtio: introduce helper function for kick/call device event
      virtio-blk-pci: implement device event interface for kick/call
      virtio-scsi-pci: implement device event interface for kick/call
      vhost-scsi-pci: implement device event interface for kick/call
      virtio-net-pci: implement device event interface for kick/call

    hmp-commands.hx                 | 14 ++++++++
    hw/block/virtio-blk.c           |  9 +++++
    hw/net/virtio-net.c             |  9 +++++
    hw/scsi/vhost-scsi.c            |  6 ++++
    hw/scsi/virtio-scsi.c           |  9 +++++
    hw/virtio/vhost-scsi-pci.c      | 10 ++++++
    hw/virtio/virtio-blk-pci.c      | 10 ++++++
    hw/virtio/virtio-net-pci.c      | 10 ++++++
    hw/virtio/virtio-scsi-pci.c     | 10 ++++++
    hw/virtio/virtio.c              | 64 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    include/hw/qdev-core.h          |  9 +++++
    include/hw/virtio/vhost-scsi.h  |  3 ++
    include/hw/virtio/virtio-blk.h  |  2 ++
    include/hw/virtio/virtio-net.h  |  3 ++
    include/hw/virtio/virtio-scsi.h |  3 ++
    include/hw/virtio/virtio.h      |  3 ++
    include/monitor/hmp.h           |  1 +
    qapi/qdev.json                  | 30 +++++++++++++++++
    softmmu/qdev-monitor.c          | 56 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
    19 files changed, 261 insertions(+)


I did tests with below cases.

- virtio-blk-pci (ioeventfd on/off, iothread, live migration)
- virtio-scsi-pci (ioeventfd on/off)
- vhost-scsi-pci
- virtio-net-pci (ioeventfd on/off, vhost)

Thank you very much!

Dongli Zhang






reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]