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Sean Christopherson 919f6cd8bb KVM: doc: Document the life cycle of a VM and its resources
The series to add memcg accounting to KVM allocations[1] states:

  There are many KVM kernel memory allocations which are tied to the
  life of the VM process and should be charged to the VM process's
  cgroup.

While it is correct to account KVM kernel allocations to the cgroup of
the process that created the VM, it's technically incorrect to state
that the KVM kernel memory allocations are tied to the life of the VM
process.  This is because the VM itself, i.e. struct kvm, is not tied to
the life of the process which created it, rather it is tied to the life
of its associated file descriptor.  In other words, kvm_destroy_vm() is
not invoked until fput() decrements its associated file's refcount to
zero.  A simple example is to fork() in Qemu and have the child sleep
indefinitely; kvm_destroy_vm() isn't called until Qemu closes its file
descriptor *and* the rogue child is killed.

The allocations are guaranteed to be *accounted* to the process which
created the VM, but only because KVM's per-{VM,vCPU} ioctls reject the
ioctl() with -EIO if kvm->mm != current->mm.  I.e. the child can keep
the VM "alive" but can't do anything useful with its reference.

Note that because 'struct kvm' also holds a reference to the mm_struct
of its owner, the above behavior also applies to userspace allocations.

Given that mucking with a VM's file descriptor can lead to subtle and
undesirable behavior, e.g. memcg charges persisting after a VM is shut
down, explicitly document a VM's lifecycle and its impact on the VM's
resources.

Alternatively, KVM could aggressively free resources when the creating
process exits, e.g. via mmu_notifier->release().  However, mmu_notifier
isn't guaranteed to be available, and freeing resources when the creator
exits is likely to be error prone and fragile as KVM would need to
ensure that it only freed resources that are truly out of reach. In
practice, the existing behavior shouldn't be problematic as a properly
configured system will prevent a child process from being moved out of
the appropriate cgroup hierarchy, i.e. prevent hiding the process from
the OOM killer, and will prevent an unprivileged user from being able to
to hold a reference to struct kvm via another method, e.g. debugfs.

[1]https://patchwork.kernel.org/patch/10806707/

Signed-off-by: Sean Christopherson <sean.j.christopherson@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Paolo Bonzini <pbonzini@redhat.com>
2019-03-28 17:29:51 +01:00
arch KVM: x86: update %rip after emulating IO 2019-03-28 17:29:04 +01:00
block io_uring-20190323 2019-03-23 10:25:12 -07:00
certs kexec, KEYS: Make use of platform keyring for signature verify 2019-02-04 17:34:07 -05:00
crypto lib/lzo: separate lzo-rle from lzo 2019-03-07 18:32:03 -08:00
Documentation KVM: doc: Document the life cycle of a VM and its resources 2019-03-28 17:29:51 +01:00
drivers Merge branch 'timers-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2019-03-24 11:09:47 -07:00
fs Miscellaneous ext4 bug fixes for 5.1. 2019-03-24 13:41:37 -07:00
include KVM: export <linux/kvm_para.h> and <asm/kvm_para.h> iif KVM is supported 2019-03-28 17:27:42 +01:00
init init/main: add checks for the return value of memblock_alloc*() 2019-03-12 10:04:02 -07:00
ipc Merge branch 'work.mount' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2019-03-12 14:08:19 -07:00
kernel Merge branch 'sched-urgent-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip 2019-03-24 11:42:10 -07:00
lib Kbuild updates for v5.1 (2nd) 2019-03-17 13:25:26 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES: Add GCC runtime library exception text 2019-01-16 14:54:15 -07:00
mm device-dax for 5.1 2019-03-16 13:05:32 -07:00
net libceph: wait for latest osdmap in ceph_monc_blacklist_add() 2019-03-20 16:27:40 +01:00
samples Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net 2019-03-11 08:54:01 -07:00
scripts kconfig: remove stale lxdialog/.gitignore 2019-03-17 15:47:02 +09:00
security selinux: fix NULL dereference in policydb_destroy() 2019-03-18 12:19:48 -04:00
sound sound fixes for 5.1-rc2 2019-03-22 14:04:38 -07:00
tools KVM: selftests: complete IO before migrating guest state 2019-03-28 17:29:09 +01:00
usr user/Makefile: Fix typo and capitalization in comment section 2018-12-11 00:18:03 +09:00
virt kvm: don't redefine flags as something else 2019-03-28 17:28:59 +01:00
.clang-format Merge branch 'work.iov_iter' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/viro/vfs 2019-03-12 13:43:42 -07:00
.cocciconfig scripts: add Linux .cocciconfig for coccinelle 2016-07-22 12:13:39 +02:00
.get_maintainer.ignore Add hch to .get_maintainer.ignore 2015-08-21 14:30:10 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: set git diff driver for C source code files 2016-10-07 18:46:30 -07:00
.gitignore kbuild: Add support for DT binding schema checks 2018-12-13 09:41:32 -06:00
.mailmap .mailmap: Add Mathieu Othacehe 2019-02-21 11:41:19 +00:00
COPYING COPYING: use the new text with points to the license files 2018-03-23 12:41:45 -06:00
CREDITS Char/Misc driver patches for 5.1-rc1 2019-03-06 14:18:59 -08:00
Kbuild Kbuild updates for v5.1 2019-03-10 17:48:21 -07:00
Kconfig kconfig: move the "Executable file formats" menu to fs/Kconfig.binfmt 2018-08-02 08:06:55 +09:00
MAINTAINERS io_uring-20190323 2019-03-23 10:25:12 -07:00
Makefile Linux 5.1-rc2 2019-03-24 14:02:26 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.