Re: [Xen-devel] [PATCH 0/2] Userspace grant communication

[Pasi Kärkkäinen <pasik@xxxxxx>]

On Fri, Dec 03, 2010 at 10:36:17AM -0500, Daniel De Graaf wrote:
> For fast communication between userspace applications in different domains,
> it is useful to be able to set up a shared memory page. This can be used to
> implement device driver frontends and backends completely in userspace, or
> as a faster alternative to network communication. The current gntdev is
> limited to PV domains, and does not allow grants to be created. The following
> patches change gntdev to remapping existing pages, allowing the same code
> to be used in PV and HVM, and add a gntalloc driver to allow mappings to be
> created by userspace. These changes also make the mappings more application-
> friendly: the mmap() calls can be made multiple times, persist across fork(),
> and allow the device to be closed without invalidating the mapped areas. This
> matches the behavior of mmap() on a normal file.
> 

Btw are you aware of the new fast inter-domain communication method in 
XenClient ?

-- Pasi


> API changes from the existing /dev/xen/gntdev:
> 
> The unused "pad" field in ioctl_gntdev_map_grant_ref is now used for flags
> on the mapping (currently used to specify if the mapping should be writable).
> This provides sufficient information to perform the mapping when the ioctl is
> called. To retain compatibility with current userspace, a new ioctl number is
> used for this functionality and the legacy error on first mapping is retained
> when the old ioctl is used.
> 
> IOCTL_GNTDEV_SET_MAX_GRANTS is not exposed in the Xen userspace libraries,
> and is not very useful: it cannot be used to raise the limit of grants per
> file descriptor, and is trivial to bypass by opening the device multiple
> times. This version uses a global limit specified as a module parameter
> (modifiable at runtime via sysfs).
> 
> -- 
> Daniel De Graaf
> National Security Agency
> 
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> http://lists.xensource.com/xen-devel

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