|  |  | 
  
    |  |  | 
 
  |   |  | 
  
    |  |  | 
  
    |  |  | 
  
    |   xen-users
Re: [Xen-users] Is using w! safe to share data between domains? 
| Your scheme has a race condition in it.  Suppose that a partition has 
opened sda3 read-only and right between after seeing the tag-file 
doesn't exist and re-mounting the partition, someone else comes in and 
creates the tag file.  You know have to partitions that have followed 
your rules and have simultaneously opened the partition read-write. 
Even if you eliminated the race condition, in general, it's probably not 
a good idea to open a file system (even if it's read-only) while someone 
else has it open read-write.  There's no guarantee the meta-data is 
going to be in a consistent state. 
Your best bet is probably to use networking to share data between 
partitions. 
Regards,
Anthony Liguori
John A. Sullivan III wrote:
 
I have a slightly unusual situation where I need to pass data from one
domain to another but, for security reasons, one of the domains will not
be on the network.  I would like to pass the data via a shared disk
partition.  I would like to know if what I have done is safe.
I created a disk partition named /dev/VG1/pkipass.
Each domU disk definition contains: 'phy:VG1/pkipass,sda3,w!'
None of the domUs automatically mounts this device.
When one domU needs to deposit data for another domU to pick up (this
exchange is always a manual effort to first deposit the shared data and
then retrieve the shared data), we do the following:
The depositing domU mounts sda3 read-only.
It looks for a tag file -- this tag file is created when a domU has
mounted the partition as read-write
If the tag-file exists {
        it unmounts the partition
        it sleeps briefly
        it retries
}
else {
        it remounts the partition read-write
        it creates the tag file
        it deposits the data
        it deletes the tag fie
        it unmounts the partition
}
A similar process is used to retrieve the data.
Is this safe?
Thanks - John
 
_______________________________________________
Xen-users mailing list
Xen-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.xensource.com/xen-users
 | 
 |  | 
  
    |  |  |