linux/arch/x86
George Dunlap a5ebe0ba3d perf/x86: Check all MSRs before passing hw check
check_hw_exists() has a number of checks which go to two exit
paths: msr_fail and bios_fail.  Checks classified as msr_fail
will cause check_hw_exists() to return false, causing the PMU
not to be used; bios_fail checks will only cause a warning to be
printed, but will return true.

The problem is that if there are both msr failures and bios
failures, and the routine hits a bios_fail check first, it will
exit early and return true, not finishing the rest of the msr
checks.  If those msrs are in fact broken, it will cause them to
be used erroneously.

In the case of a Xen PV VM, the guest OS has read access to all
the MSRs, but write access is white-listed to supported
features.  Writes to unsupported MSRs have no effect.  The PMU
MSRs are not (typically) supported, because they are expensive
to save and restore on a VM context switch.  One of the
"msr_fail" checks is supposed to detect this circumstance (ether
for Xen or KVM) and disable the harware PMU.

However, on one of my AMD boxen, there is (apparently) a broken
BIOS which triggers one of the bios_fail checks.  In particular,
MSR_K7_EVNTSEL0 has the ARCH_PERFMON_EVENTSEL_ENABLE bit set.
The guest kernel detects this because it has read access to all
MSRs, and causes it to skip the rest of the checks and try to
use the non-existent hardware PMU.  This minimally causes a lot
of useless instruction emulation and Xen console spam; it may
cause other issues with the watchdog as well.

This changset causes check_hw_exists() to go through all of the
msr checks, failing and returning false if any of them fail.
This makes sure that a guest running under Xen without a virtual
PMU will detect that there is no functioning PMU and not attempt
to use it.

This problem affects kernels as far back as 3.2, and should thus
be considered for backport.

Signed-off-by: George Dunlap <george.dunlap@eu.citrix.com>
Cc: Konrad Wilk <konrad.wilk@oracle.com>
Cc: Ian Campbell <ian.campbell@citrix.com>
Cc: David Vrabel <david.vrabel@citrix.com>
Cc: Andrew Cooper <andrew.cooper3@citrix.com>
Link: http://lkml.kernel.org/r/1365000388-32448-1-git-send-email-george.dunlap@eu.citrix.com
Signed-off-by: Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>
2013-04-21 11:16:29 +02:00
..
boot x86: Fix rebuild with EFI_STUB enabled 2013-04-05 13:59:23 -07:00
configs x86: Default to ARCH=x86 to avoid overriding CONFIG_64BIT 2012-12-20 14:37:18 -08:00
crypto Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2013-02-25 15:56:15 -08:00
ia32 Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/signal 2013-03-02 08:34:06 -08:00
include perf/x86/amd: Add support for AMD NB and L2I "uncore" counters 2013-04-21 11:01:24 +02:00
kernel perf/x86: Check all MSRs before passing hw check 2013-04-21 11:16:29 +02:00
kvm KVM: Allow cross page reads and writes from cached translations. 2013-04-07 13:05:35 +03:00
lguest x86, mm: Patch out arch_flush_lazy_mmu_mode() when running on bare metal 2013-04-10 11:25:10 -07:00
lib x86-64: Fix the failure case in copy_user_handle_tail() 2013-03-18 11:32:03 -07:00
math-emu
mm Merge branch 'x86-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2013-04-14 11:13:24 -07:00
net x86: bpf_jit_comp: add pkt_type support 2013-01-30 22:38:34 -05:00
oprofile oprofile, x86: Fix wrapping bug in op_x86_get_ctrl() 2012-10-15 14:38:24 +02:00
pci Bug-fixes: 2013-03-03 14:22:53 -08:00
platform Merge branch 'x86-efi-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2013-02-27 16:17:42 -08:00
power perf,x86: fix kernel crash with PEBS/BTS after suspend/resume 2013-03-15 09:26:35 -07:00
realmode Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/x86/mm' into x86/mm2 2013-02-01 02:28:36 -08:00
syscalls fix compat truncate/ftruncate 2013-02-25 09:24:55 -05:00
tools Merge branch 'perf-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2013-02-05 07:57:09 +11:00
um Merge branch 'for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/signal 2013-02-23 18:50:11 -08:00
vdso timers/x86/hpet: Use HPET_COUNTER to specify the hpet counter in vread_hpet() 2013-02-15 12:13:18 +01:00
video
xen Merge branch 'x86-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2013-04-14 11:13:24 -07:00
.gitignore
Kbuild
Kconfig Select VIRT_TO_BUS directly where needed 2013-03-12 11:16:40 -07:00
Kconfig.cpu x86, 386 removal: Document Nx586 as a 386 and thus unsupported 2012-11-29 13:28:39 -08:00
Kconfig.debug
Makefile Merge branch 'x86-build-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2013-02-19 19:12:03 -08:00
Makefile.um
Makefile_32.cpu x86, 386 removal: Remove CONFIG_M386 from Kconfig 2012-11-29 13:23:01 -08:00