From bb19cc0cdd43619ccf830e1e608f79e46f8ddf86 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001

From: "Richard W.M. Jones" <rjones@redhat.com>

Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 08:36:37 +0100

Subject: [PATCH] lib: Disable 5-level page tables when using -cpu max

In https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2082806 we've been

tracking an insidious qemu bug which intermittently prevents the

libguestfs appliance from starting.  The symptoms are that SeaBIOS

starts and displays its messages, but the kernel isn't reached.  We

found that the kernel does in fact start, but when it tries to set up

page tables and jump to protected mode it gets a triple fault which

causes the emulated CPU in qemu to reset (qemu exits).

This seems to only affect TCG (not KVM).

Yesterday I found that this is caused by using -cpu max which enables

the "la57" feature (5-level page tables[0]), and that we can make the

problem go away using -cpu max,la57=off.  Note that I still don't

fully understand the qemu bug, so this is only a workaround.

I chose to disable 5-level page tables for both TCG and KVM, partly to

make the patch simpler, and partly because I guess it's not a feature

(ie. 57 bit linear addresses) that is useful for the libguestfs

appliance case, where we have limited physical memory and no need to

run any programs with huge address spaces.

I tested this by running both the direct & libvirt paths overnight.  I

expect that this patch will fail with old qemu/libvirt which doesn't

understand the "la57" feature, but this is only intended as a

temporary workaround.

[0] Article about 5-level page tables as background:

https://lwn.net/Articles/717293/

Thanks: Laszlo Ersek

Fixes: https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libguestfs/+question/701625

[RHEL 8.7: Patch is not upstream.  This is the initial patch as posted

to the mailing list here:

https://listman.redhat.com/archives/libguestfs/2022-May/028853.html]

---

 lib/launch-direct.c  | 15 +++++++++++++--

 lib/launch-libvirt.c |  7 +++++++

 2 files changed, 20 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

diff --git a/lib/launch-direct.c b/lib/launch-direct.c

index de17d2167..6b28e4724 100644

--- a/lib/launch-direct.c

+++ b/lib/launch-direct.c

@@ -534,8 +534,19 @@ launch_direct (guestfs_h *g, void *datav, const char *arg)

   } end_list ();

   cpu_model = guestfs_int_get_cpu_model (has_kvm && !force_tcg);

-  if (cpu_model)

-    arg ("-cpu", cpu_model);

+  if (cpu_model) {

+#if defined(__x86_64__)

+    /* Temporary workaround for RHBZ#2082806 */

+    if (STREQ (cpu_model, "max")) {

+      start_list ("-cpu") {

+        append_list (cpu_model);

+        append_list ("la57=off");

+      } end_list ();

+    }

+    else

+#endif

+      arg ("-cpu", cpu_model);

+  }

   if (g->smp > 1)

     arg_format ("-smp", "%d", g->smp);

diff --git a/lib/launch-libvirt.c b/lib/launch-libvirt.c

index db619910f..bad4a54ea 100644

--- a/lib/launch-libvirt.c

+++ b/lib/launch-libvirt.c

@@ -1172,6 +1172,13 @@ construct_libvirt_xml_cpu (guestfs_h *g,

       else if (STREQ (cpu_model, "max")) {

         /* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1935572#c11 */

         attribute ("mode", "maximum");

+#if defined(__x86_64__)

+        /* Temporary workaround for RHBZ#2082806 */

+        start_element ("feature") {

+          attribute ("policy", "disable");

+          attribute ("name", "la57");

+        } end_element ();

+#endif

       }

       else

         single_element ("model", cpu_model);

-- 

2.31.1