Patch series "Live Update Orchestrator", v8.
This series introduces the Live Update Orchestrator, a kernel subsystem
designed to facilitate live kernel updates using a kexec-based reboot.
This capability is critical for cloud environments, allowing hypervisors
to be updated with minimal downtime for running virtual machines. LUO
achieves this by preserving the state of selected resources, such as
memory, devices and their dependencies, across the kernel transition.
As a key feature, this series includes support for preserving memfd file
descriptors, which allows critical in-memory data, such as guest RAM or
any other large memory region, to be maintained in RAM across the kexec
reboot.
The other series that use LUO, are VFIO [1], IOMMU [2], and PCI [3]
preservations.
Github repo of this series [4].
The core of LUO is a framework for managing the lifecycle of preserved
resources through a userspace-driven interface. Key features include:
- Session Management
Userspace agent (i.e. luod [5]) creates named sessions, each
represented by a file descriptor (via centralized agent that controls
/dev/liveupdate). The lifecycle of all preserved resources within a
session is tied to this FD, ensuring automatic kernel cleanup if the
controlling userspace agent crashes or exits unexpectedly.
- File Preservation
A handler-based framework allows specific file types (demonstrated
here with memfd) to be preserved. Handlers manage the serialization,
restoration, and lifecycle of their specific file types.
- File-Lifecycle-Bound State
A new mechanism for managing shared global state whose lifecycle is
tied to the preservation of one or more files. This is crucial for
subsystems like IOMMU or HugeTLB, where multiple file descriptors may
depend on a single, shared underlying resource that must be preserved
only once.
- KHO Integration
LUO drives the Kexec Handover framework programmatically to pass its
serialized metadata to the next kernel. The LUO state is finalized and
added to the kexec image just before the reboot is triggered. In the
future this step will also be removed once stateless KHO is
merged [6].
- Userspace Interface
Control is provided via ioctl commands on /dev/liveupdate for creating
and retrieving sessions, as well as on session file descriptors for
managing individual files.
- Testing
The series includes a set of selftests, including userspace API
validation, kexec-based lifecycle tests for various session and file
scenarios, and a new in-kernel test module to validate the FLB logic.
Introduce LUO, a mechanism intended to facilitate kernel updates while
keeping designated devices operational across the transition (e.g., via
kexec). The primary use case is updating hypervisors with minimal
disruption to running virtual machines. For userspace side of hypervisor
update we have copyless migration. LUO is for updating the kernel.
This initial patch lays the groundwork for the LUO subsystem.
Further functionality, including the implementation of state transition
logic, integration with KHO, and hooks for subsystems and file
descriptors, will be added in subsequent patches.
Create a character device at /dev/liveupdate.
A new uAPI header, <uapi/linux/liveupdate.h>, will define the necessary
structures. The magic number for IOCTL is registered in
Documentation/userspace-api/ioctl/ioctl-number.rst.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251125165850.3389713-1-pasha.tatashin@soleen.com
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20251125165850.3389713-2-pasha.tatashin@soleen.com
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251018000713.677779-1-vipinsh@google.com/ [1]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-iommu/20250928190624.3735830-1-skhawaja@google.com [2]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20250916-luo-pci-v2-0-c494053c3c08@kernel.org [3]
Link: https://github.com/googleprodkernel/linux-liveupdate/tree/luo/v8 [4]
Link: https://tinyurl.com/luoddesign [5]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251020100306.2709352-1-jasonmiu@google.com [6]
Link: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20251115233409.768044-1-pasha.tatashin@soleen.com [7]
Link: https://github.com/soleen/linux/blob/luo/v8b03/diff.v7.v8 [8]
Signed-off-by: Pasha Tatashin <pasha.tatashin@soleen.com>
Reviewed-by: Pratyush Yadav <pratyush@kernel.org>
Reviewed-by: Mike Rapoport (Microsoft) <rppt@kernel.org>
Tested-by: David Matlack <dmatlack@google.com>
Cc: Aleksander Lobakin <aleksander.lobakin@intel.com>
Cc: Alexander Graf <graf@amazon.com>
Cc: Alice Ryhl <aliceryhl@google.com>
Cc: Andriy Shevchenko <andriy.shevchenko@linux.intel.com>
Cc: anish kumar <yesanishhere@gmail.com>
Cc: Anna Schumaker <anna.schumaker@oracle.com>
Cc: Bartosz Golaszewski <bartosz.golaszewski@linaro.org>
Cc: Bjorn Helgaas <bhelgaas@google.com>
Cc: Borislav Betkov <bp@alien8.de>
Cc: Chanwoo Choi <cw00.choi@samsung.com>
Cc: Chen Ridong <chenridong@huawei.com>
Cc: Chris Li <chrisl@kernel.org>
Cc: Christian Brauner <brauner@kernel.org>
Cc: Daniel Wagner <wagi@kernel.org>
Cc: Danilo Krummrich <dakr@kernel.org>
Cc: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Cc: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Cc: David Jeffery <djeffery@redhat.com>
Cc: David Rientjes <rientjes@google.com>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Guixin Liu <kanie@linux.alibaba.com>
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
Cc: Hugh Dickins <hughd@google.com>
Cc: Ilpo Järvinen <ilpo.jarvinen@linux.intel.com>
Cc: Ingo Molnar <mingo@redhat.com>
Cc: Ira Weiny <ira.weiny@intel.com>
Cc: Jann Horn <jannh@google.com>
Cc: Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@nvidia.com>
Cc: Jens Axboe <axboe@kernel.dk>
Cc: Joanthan Cameron <Jonathan.Cameron@huawei.com>
Cc: Joel Granados <joel.granados@kernel.org>
Cc: Johannes Weiner <hannes@cmpxchg.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: Lennart Poettering <lennart@poettering.net>
Cc: Leon Romanovsky <leon@kernel.org>
Cc: Leon Romanovsky <leonro@nvidia.com>
Cc: Lukas Wunner <lukas@wunner.de>
Cc: Marc Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
Cc: Masahiro Yamada <masahiroy@kernel.org>
Cc: Matthew Maurer <mmaurer@google.com>
Cc: Miguel Ojeda <ojeda@kernel.org>
Cc: Myugnjoo Ham <myungjoo.ham@samsung.com>
Cc: Parav Pandit <parav@nvidia.com>
Cc: Randy Dunlap <rdunlap@infradead.org>
Cc: Roman Gushchin <roman.gushchin@linux.dev>
Cc: Saeed Mahameed <saeedm@nvidia.com>
Cc: Samiullah Khawaja <skhawaja@google.com>
Cc: Song Liu <song@kernel.org>
Cc: Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>
Cc: Stuart Hayes <stuart.w.hayes@gmail.com>
Cc: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
Cc: Thomas Gleinxer <tglx@linutronix.de>
Cc: Thomas Weißschuh <linux@weissschuh.net>
Cc: Vincent Guittot <vincent.guittot@linaro.org>
Cc: William Tu <witu@nvidia.com>
Cc: Yoann Congal <yoann.congal@smile.fr>
Cc: Zijun Hu <quic_zijuhu@quicinc.com>
Cc: Pratyush Yadav <ptyadav@amazon.de>
Cc: Zhu Yanjun <yanjun.zhu@linux.dev>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
9e2fd062fa