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Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Paging and memory sharing for HVM guests

To: Jan Beulich <JBeulich@xxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH] Paging and memory sharing for HVM guests
From: Patrick Colp <pjcolp@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2009 09:29:39 -0800
Cc: xen-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Keir Fraser <keir.fraser@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Grzegorz Milos <gm281@xxxxxxxxx>, Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx>, Andrew Peace <Andrew.Peace@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
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Jan Beulich wrote:
Patrick Colp <pjcolp@xxxxxxxxx> 17.12.09 18:05 >>>
Jan Beulich wrote:
Konrad Rzeszutek Wilk <konrad.wilk@xxxxxxxxxx> 17.12.09 17:38 >>>
1). The  "*mfnp |= 0x80000000U;" and "*mfnp |= 0xf0000000U;" should
   use a #define. Maybe copy over the #defines from the xen tree ?
Did you find any defines in the tools sources for that? The only place I
found this condition being checked at all was in xc_map_foreign_pages(),
where it used hard-coded values. Or are you referring to the
XEN_DOMCTL_PFINFO_* values? I'd say they're being mis-used when
applied to the mfn array used by mmap-batch (including apparent
pre-existing uses).
I think many people agree that this idea of using 0xf0000000 is a very inelegant solution (myself included). Maybe now would be a good time to hash out what the proper way to deal with this is. I think this discussion should extend to the privcmd/libxc mmap interfaces generally as well.

Yes, I fully agree. While I had cooked together a patch to make the
tools auto-detect whether the underlying (64-bit) kernel uses a
sufficiently wide mask as error indicator (and a Linux side patch to
actually make the kernel behaviorally match the pseudo-documentation
in privcmd.h ("array of mfns - top nibble set on err"), I meanwhile
realized that this would break older tools running on a fixed kernel
(a combination I suppose to be valid).

The only way I can see to solve this is a new ioctl, and if we need a
new ioctl anyway, we can as well design it properly. The question
however is what the best way for an error indication is: Fully over-
writing the passed in MFNs, an extra bit vector passed in (does user
mode have a sufficiently common interface for dealing with bit fields,
like the kernel's bitops.h?), or yet something else?

A new ioctl seems like the reasonable approach. And as you, say if we're going to have a new ioctl, then let's do it right. When calling xc_map_foreign_batch(), is there any requirement that the pfns you pass in are contiguous (ordering incrementally)? If not, then I think completely over-writing the MFNs is probably the wrong thing to do, as it requires callers to keep two copies of the array to find out which pages didn't map. I would be more in favour of returning a bit vector. As far as I know, there is currently no common userland bitops.h. However, in my paging tool I have one, so it is possible to have it. We could include it with libxc (or in some other common library).


Patrick

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