Re: [PULL 01/39] accel/tcg: mttcg remove false-negative halted assertion

[Alex Bennée]

"Nicholas Piggin" <npiggin@gmail.com> writes:

> On Mon Sep 18, 2023 at 5:59 PM AEST, Alex Bennée wrote:
>>
>> "Nicholas Piggin" <npiggin@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>> > On Sat Sep 16, 2023 at 1:29 PM AEST, Richard Henderson wrote:
>> >> From: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>
>> >>
>> >> mttcg asserts that an execution ending with EXCP_HALTED must have
>> >> cpu->halted. However between the event or instruction that sets
>> >> cpu->halted and requests exit and the assertion here, an
>> >> asynchronous event could clear cpu->halted.
>> >>
>> >> This leads to crashes running AIX on ppc/pseries because it uses
>> >> H_CEDE/H_PROD hcalls, where H_CEDE sets self->halted = 1 and
>> >> H_PROD sets other cpu->halted = 0 and kicks it.
>> >>
>> >> H_PROD could be turned into an interrupt to wake, but several other
>> >> places in ppc, sparc, and semihosting follow what looks like a similar
>> >> pattern setting halted = 0 directly. So remove this assertion.
>> >>
>> >> Reported-by: Ivan Warren <ivan@vmfacility.fr>
>> >> Signed-off-by: Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@gmail.com>
>> >> Message-Id: <20230829010658.8252-1-npiggin@gmail.com>
>> >> [rth: Keep the case label and adjust the comment.]
>> >
>> > Hey Richard,
>> >
>> > Thanks for picking this up.
>> >
>> > I think EXCP_HLT and EXCP_HALTED are effectively the same, so they could
>> > be merged after this.
>> >
>> > I couldn't quite decipher the intended difference between them, HLT is
>> > "hlt instruction reached", but it does tend to go into a mode where it
>> > is halted waiting for external event. Is there some useful difference in
>> > semantics we should retain (and at least try to find a way to assert)?
>>
>> I always thought HALTED was where the system was halted (e.g. during a
>> shutdown) but I agree its less than clear.
>
> Maybe that was so. I didn't manage to track down the original intention
> of them, but now they are not different, HALTED does just wait for event
> too. EXCP_HALTED did previously require the operation set ->halted = 1
> before calling (the assert only breaks due to concurrent wakeup clearing
> it). But some ops that use EXCP_HLT also set ->halted.
>
> So nowadays halted == 1 means to check ->cpu_has_work() before running
> the CPU again (and otherwise wait on io event as you say). And
> EXCP_HLT/HALTED are both just ways to return from the cpu exec loop.
>
> One thing I'm not sure of is why you would set EXCP_HLT without setting
> halted. In some cases it could be a bug (e.g., avr helper_sleep()), but
> there are a few ops that use it after a CPU reset or shutdown which
> might be valid. Could call those ones something like EXCP_RESET or
> EXCP_REEXEC.

Reading the comments:

#define EXCP_HLT        0x10001 /* hlt instruction reached */
#define EXCP_HALTED     0x10003 /* cpu is halted (waiting for external event) */

makes me think HLT covers instructions like WFI which we didn't use to
fully model (and architecturally can just be NOPs). Might be worth
splerlunking in the commit log to find when they were introduced.

>
> Thanks,
> Nick


-- 
Alex Bennée
Virtualisation Tech Lead @ Linaro